BOOKOFOLD-WORLDGARDENS 



A garden distances. In the old days of the Grange they 

 E toold nac ^ Deen squared in three lessening stages, 

 times the uppermost tapering pyramidally to a point. 

 While the house had been shorn of itshonours, 

 the yews remained unshorn; but when it was 

 oncemoreoccupiedbyawealthly habitant, and 

 a new gate had been set up and the pillars and 

 their stone balls cleaned from moss and lichen 

 and short ferns, the unfortunate evergreens were 

 again reduced to the formal shape in which Mr 

 Allisonandhis sister remembered them in their 

 childhood. This was with them a matter of feel- 

 ing, which is a better thing than taste. And in- 

 deed the yews must either have been trimmed, 

 or cut down, because they intercepted sunshine 

 from the garden, and the prospect from the up- 

 per windows. The garden would havebeen bet- 

 ter without them, forthey were bad neighbours: 

 but they belonged to old times, and it would 

 have seemed a sort of sacrilege to destroy them. 

 Flower-beds used, like beds in the kitchen- 

 garden, to be raised alittleabovethepath, with 

 nothingtodividethem fromit,till about thebe- 

 ginningof the seventeenth century; the fashion 

 of bordering them was introduced either by 

 the Italians or the French. Daisies,perivvinkles, 



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