112 A BOOK ABOUT ROSES. 



due proportion, it is the most becoming frame- 

 work for our summer flowers ; but my complaint 

 is, that this giant Geometry has taken possession 

 of our small gardens not as an ally, but as an 

 autocrat — ejecting old tenants and dismissing old 

 servants, like some heartless conceited heir, ex- 

 truding them disdainfully, as the usurping cuckoo 

 thrusts the eggs from a sparrow's nest. Just as 

 that sensational system of gardening, which goes 

 by the name of ** Bedding-Out," has expelled in 

 so many instances our beautiful herbaceous plants 

 and our lovely flowering shrubs, so the geometri- 

 cal style has destroyed too frequently a more 

 natural grace, wearying the eye instead of refresh- 

 ing it. Some may like to see the hair pulled back 

 from a winsome face, or twisted in fantastic forms: 

 give me ripples of light in the wavelike braid, 

 and reliefs of shade in the glossy clustering curls. 

 True art hides itself, and every man in laying 

 out a garden should remember the precept, Ars 

 est celare artem. He should, moreover, cause to 

 be painted on his case of mathematical instru- 

 ments, and printed largely on the cover of his 

 sketch-book, those two lines, written by a true 

 gardener and poet (must not every true gardener 

 be a poet, though it may be of songs without 

 words ?) — - 



