292 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS 



and sing indefatigably. Now I must take a turn round the place 

 and then work at my Goethe. — December 1877. 



And I do very much enjoy the life at home, with half an hour 

 in the garden every morning, and two hours in the lanes every 

 afternoon. The aconites are coming out, and as for the primroses 

 they are all over the place. I have been repairing the ravages 

 made by the elm-tree's fall, and really with cupressuses and thujas 

 the gap has lost its horror already, and will be quite filled up in 

 a year or two. — 1882. 



The colour has come at last, and the horse-chestnuts and 

 poplars are a sight. I go about the garden — I cannot come in to 

 work — examine the acorns on the Turkey Oak, with their curly- 

 haired cups, which I had never noticed before ; they are very 

 effective. Then I give Flu, who is driving to Lady Ellesmere, a 

 Duchesse pear to take to her, who says she shall carry it to her 

 gardener to show him how much finer pears are grown at the Cottage 

 than at Burwood. Then I go to pick up some Spanish chestnuts. 

 At last I come in to work. — To Miss Arnold^ October 29, 1886. 



You can imagine the relief with which I have been going about 

 the garden this morning and planting. Numbers of summer 

 flowers — the red salvia, for instance — are blooming. The birds 

 are happy in the open weather, and the sweet robins keep following 

 CoUis and me about as we open the ground to plant rhododen- 

 drons. — Letter to his eldest daughter^ Nove77iber 13, 1886. {Letters 

 of Matthew Arnold^ by G. W. E. Russell.) 



WILLIAM /^UR suburban gardeners in London, for instance, oftenest 

 ^-^ wind about their little bit of gravel walk and grass plot 



MORRIS 



(1834-1896) 



in ridiculous imitation of an ugly big garden of the landscape- 

 gardening style, and then with a strange perversity fill up the 

 spaces with the most formal plants they can get ; whereas the 

 merest common-sense should have taught them to lay out 



