HISTORICAL EPILOGUE 317 



dissatisfied with the opinions of Bishop Huet and others on the 

 ' Situation of Paradise,' has succeeded in his attempt to identify 

 its precise position at the heads of the four great rivers of Africa/ 

 we must be satisfied with Milton's imaginative description in 

 * Paradise Lost.' 



Possibly it may eventually be proved that Eden is identical with 

 the 'Gardens of the Hesperides' near Mount Atlas; although 

 these gardens, again, stripped of poetic fruit and foliage, have 

 been declared to be only disused stone quarries at Berenice 

 (Bengaze) affording fine soil and shelter for luxuriant fruit-trees.^ 



Milton, it is interesting to note, has so carefully ' trimmed ' and 

 ' hedged ' his garden, as to have been claimed in turns by the 

 partisans of either school as representing its views. 



A set of quotations is necessary to enable the reader to judge 

 whether Horace Walpole is right in seeing only Nature therein, 

 or Walter Bagehot in asserting you could draw a map of it. 



Of Eden, where delicious Paradise, 

 Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green 

 As with a rural mound, the champain head 

 Of a sleep wilderness ; whose hairy sides 

 With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild, 

 Access denied ; and overhead up-grew 

 Insuperable height of loftiest shade, 

 Cedar and pine and fir, and branching palm, 

 A sylvan scene ! and, as the ranks ascend 

 Shade above shade, a woody theatre 

 Of stateliest vieiv. Yet higher than their tops 

 The verdurous wall of Paradise up-sprung : 

 ... In this pleasant soil 

 His far more pleasant garden God ordained. 



Flowers worthy of Paradise, which tiot nice art 

 In beds and curious knots, but Nature boon 

 Pour'd forth profuse on hill and dale and plain. 



1 See Mr W. Marshall Adams's letter to The Times on ' The New Search 

 for Eden.' November 23, 1898. 



2 Lieut. Beechey's Travels in Cyrene, 1828, and Gardeners Magazine, vol. 

 iv. p. 398 (Loudon). 



