ON THE THEORY OF A GARDEN. 



banks fringed with flowering shrubs and trailing 

 willows and brambles — where the flowers smile out 

 of dainty beds in the sunny ecstasy of " sweet mad- 

 ness " — where the air is flooded with fragrance, and 

 the mixed music of trembling leaves, falling water, 

 singing birds, and the drowsy hum of innumerable 

 insects' wings. 



" What is a garden ? " It is man's report of earth 

 at her best. It is earth emancipated from the com- 

 monplace. Earth is man's intimate possession — 

 Earth arrayed for beauty's bridal. It is man's love 

 of loveliness carried to excess — man's craving for the 

 ideal grown to a fine lunacy. It is piquant wonder- 

 ment ; culminated beauty, that for all its combination 

 of telling and select items, can still contrive to look 

 natural, debonair, native to its place. A garden is 

 Nature aglow, illuminated with new significance. It 

 is Nature on parade before men's eyes ; Flodden Field 

 in every parish, where on summer days she holds 

 court in " lanes of splendour," beset with pomp and 

 pageantry more glorious than all the kings'. 



" Why is a garden made? " Primarily, it would 

 seem, to gratify man's craving for beauty. Behind 

 fine crardeninof is fine desire. It is a olain fact that 

 men do not make beautiful things merely for the sake 

 of something to do, but, rather, because their souls 

 compel them. Any beautiful work of art is a feat, 

 an essay, of human soul. Someone has said that 

 " noble dreams are great realities " — this in praise 

 of unrealised dreams ; but here, in the fine garden, 

 is the noble dream and the great reality. 



