278 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS 



shrubs, which under winter sunlight simulate a summer garden ; and 

 these shrubs I had to choose from rare sources, for the rare in 

 everything, whatever may be said, is almost always the beautiful. 

 . . . There was something further to do in the state of research 

 and actual progress of horticulture, and in the rehandling and artist 

 recolouring of natural verdure ; it was the duty of a coloiirist man- 

 of-letters to make a painter's garden, and to set before his eyes on 

 a large scale a palette of greens shading from the deep greens to 

 the tender ones, through the range of the blue-greens of the Juniper 

 tree, the golden-brown greens of the Cryptomerias, and all the 

 varied blendings of hue of Hollies, Spindle trees and Aucubas, 

 which, by the pallor of their leaves, give an illusion of flowers in 

 their absence. Let us confess that in this style of gardening, which 

 has a touch of bric-a-brac about it, the bush elegantly branched, 

 charmingly trained, coquettishly variegated, becomes a kind of art- 

 object, which we see again with closed eyes, dream of in bed, and 

 imagine ourselves seeking in the private garden of a great horti- 

 culturist, just as we might pursue a rarity hidden upon the shelf of 

 the private collection of a great curio-hunter. . . . 



Here is June with the flowering of the rhododendrons, and the 

 crumpling of their pink and mauve tulle, which calls up visions of 

 ball dresses ; and with their lovely tawny and black spots like 

 drones cradled in the core of the flower ; and here with the flower- 

 ing of the rhododendrons come the blossoms of the climbing 

 roses which mount into the great trees and are lost in the ivy. 

 Trails, wreaths, cascades, arranged as deftly as those of the old 

 Venetian masters around the curves of their ewers ; cascades of 

 white, yellow, and pink roses, which, with the sun enclosed in 

 their translucent petals, illumine the dark verdure. And, at dusk, 

 days which fade to the scent of pepper blent with the savours of 

 Eastern spices, to the slowly modulated songs of the weary birds, 

 and where, upon a sunless day, a lingering ray of the vanished sun 

 gilds even at eight o'clock the green of the lawn. It is the 

 moment beneath the twilight for the sport of young and imprudent 

 blackbirds still unfledged, watched over by an old, grave, and very 

 ebon blackbird. And amid the sinking into sleep of Colour, when 



