1 88 GARDEN-CRAFT. 



All of man, then, asks for all of Nature, and is not 

 content with less. Just as a stringed instrument, 

 even when lying idle, is awake to sympathetic sound 

 but refuses to vibrate to notes that are not kindred 

 to its compass, so the garden, with all its wakeful 

 magic, will voice only such of your moods as it is in 

 touch with ; and there are many chords missing in 

 the cunningly encased music of a garden — many 

 human notes find no answering pulsation there. 



Let us not blink the fact, then ; Art, whether of 

 this sphere or of that, is not all. If you want beauty 

 ready-made, obvious gladness of colour, heightened 

 nobleness of form, suggested romance, Nature idea- 

 lised — all these things are yours in a garden ; and 

 yet the very " dressing " of the place which heightens 

 its appeal to one side of man's being is the bar to its 

 acceptance on another side. To have been baptised 

 of Art is to have received gifts rich and strange, that 

 enable the garden's contents to climb to ideal heights ; 

 and yet not all men care for perfectness ; the most 

 part prefer creatures not too bright or good for 

 human nature's daily food. So, to tell truth, the 

 wild things of field, forest, and shore have a gamut 

 of life, a range of appeal wider than the gardens ; 

 the impunities of lawless Nature reach further than 

 man's finished strokes. Nay, when man has done 

 his best in a garden, some shall even regret, for 

 sentimental reasons, that he brought Art upon the 

 scene at all. " Even after the wild landscape, 

 through which youth had strayed at will, has been 

 laid out into fields and gardens, and enclosed with 



