ON THE OTHER S/DE.—A PLEA EOR SAVAGERY. 187 



through pure ignorance of wrong. Where no law 

 is, there can be no transgression. Between these 

 two points is no middle-ground, either in the fields 

 of Art or of Religion. 



To apply this to a garden. Untaught, lawless 

 Nature ma}- present things indiscriminately, as they 

 are, the casual, the accidental, the savage, in their 

 native dress, or undress, in all their rugged reality, 

 and not be ashamed. But the artist-gardener, know- 

 ing good and evil, exercising free-will in his garden- 

 craft, must choose only what he may rightly have, 

 and employ only what his trained judgment or the 

 unwritten commandments of good taste will allow. 



There you have the art of a garden. But 

 because of its necessary exclusiveness, because all 

 Nature is not there, the garden, though of the best, 

 the most far-reaching in its application of art-re- 

 sources, fails to satisfy all man's imaginative cravings. 



Your garden, I said, will serve you many a good 

 turn. Here one may come to play the truant 

 from petty worries, to find quiet harbourage in the 

 chopping sea of life's casual ups and downs ; but 

 when real trouble comes, on occasions of spiritual 

 tension, or mental confiict, or heavy depression, then 

 the perfect beauty of the garden offends ; the garden 

 has no respect for sadness — then it almost mocks 

 and flaunts you ; it smiles the same, though your 

 child die, and then instinct sends you away from the 

 lap of Art to the bosom of Nature — 



" Knowing that Nature never did betray 

 The heart that loved her." 



