196 GARDEN-CRAFT. 



unheeded as he hastens from the Alps to the sand- 

 dunes of Schevenlngen." 



I admit that it is strange that time should hold 

 in reserve such revenges as this ascetic writing 

 denotes — strange that man should find beauty irk- 

 some, and that he should feel blasted with the very 

 ecstasy himself has built up in a garden ! strange 

 this sudden recoil of the smooth son of culture 

 from the extreme of Art, to the extreme of Nature ! 

 Straneer still that the "Yes" and "No" of the 

 Ideal Hyde and the Real Jekyll should consist in 

 the same bosom., and that a man shall be, as it 

 were, a prey to contrary maladies at one and the 

 same time ! Yet we have found this in Bacon — 

 prince of fine gardeners, who with all his seeming 

 content with the heroic pleasaunce that he has made, 

 shall still betray a sneaking fondness for the maiden 

 charms of Bohemia outside. Earthly Paradise is 

 fine and fit, but there must needs be "mounts of 

 some pretty height, leaving the wall of the en- 

 closure breast high to look abroad in the fields " 

 — there must be "a window open, to fly out at, 

 a secret way to retire by." Nay, after all, what 

 are to him the charms that inspire his rhapsody 

 of words — the things that princes add for state and 

 magnificence ! They are Delilah's charms, and " but 

 nothing to the true pleasure of a garden ! " 



"Our gardens in Paris," says Joubert, "smell 

 musty ; I do not like these ever-green trees. There 

 is something of blackness in their greenery, of cold- 

 ness in their shade. Besides, since they neither lose 



