GARDEN-CRAFT. 



and earth, so that it shares the cross-Hghts of each. 

 It parades the joys of earth, yet no less hints the 

 joys of heaven. It tells of man's happy tillage of 

 his plot of ground, yet blazes abroad the infinite 

 abundance of God's wide husbandry of the world. 

 It bespeaks the glory of earth's array, yet publishes 

 its passingness.* 



Again. The punctual waking of the flowers to 

 new life upon the ruin of the old is unfavourable to 

 the fashionable theory of extinction, for it shows 

 death as the prelude of life. Nevertheless, be it 

 admitted, the garden -allegory points not all one way ; 

 it is, so to speak, a paradox that mocks while it 

 comforts. For a garden is ever perplexing us with 

 the " riddle of the painful earth," ever challenging 

 our faith with its counter-proof, ever thrusting be- 

 fore our eyes the abortive effort, the inequality of 

 lot (two roses on a single stem, the one full-blown, 

 a floral paragon, the other dwarfed and withered), the 

 permitted spite of destiny which favours the fittest 

 and drives the weak to the wall — ever preaching, with 

 damnable iteration, the folly of resisting the ills 

 that warp life and blight fair promise. 



And yet while this is so, the annual spectacle 

 of spring's fresh repair — the awakening from winter's 



* Think of " a paradise not like this of ours with so much pains and 

 curiosity made with hands"— says Evelyn, in the middle of a rhap- 

 sody on flowers — "eternal in the heavens, where all the trees are 

 trees of life, the flowers all amaranths ; all the plants perennial, 

 ever verdant, ever pregnant, and where those who desire knowledge 

 may taste freely of the fruit of that tree which cost the first gardener 

 and posterity so dear." (Sylva, " Of Forest-trees," p. 148.) 



