country houses for them to belong to, and many of these A Walled 

 are of superlative excellence. The particular walled garden Garden 

 which lies at the present moment before my mind's eye is, 

 however, an exceptionally beautiful and attractive one even 

 for Galway. 1 It is large, to begin with, and, what would 

 perhaps at first sight strike a stranger as a superfluity, it 

 contains, not only several breadths of mown grass, but more 

 than one large tree within its boundaries. Forest trees and 

 lawns within walled gardens are not, I imagine, elsewhere 

 common objects. Here in Galway, where land is compara- 

 tively at a discount, they may be said to be the rule rather than 

 the exception. Sometimes to be candid this super-abundance 

 of greenery tends towards rankness. The grass is not mown 

 quite as often as it ought to be ; the summer odd to relate 

 has turned out an exceptionally wet one ; the flowers have 

 grown tall and " leggy " ; their leaves over-prominent ; a wealth 

 of lush greenery has, in fact, overflowed everything, and the 

 result is a certain forlornness of aspect, as of a flower-garden 

 that has been^ rather than a flower-garden that is. The 

 particular garden that I am at present introducing to you lies 

 under no such peril. Love has walked to and fro amongst 

 its plants and beside its borders, and that not for a single 

 generation only. There are shrubs and creepers here nay, 

 I believe not a. few herbaceous plants which have stood as 

 we see them, stately and gracious, for more than the life-time 

 of a single owner. "Ah, yes, those larkspurs" (or peonies, 

 or daphnes, as the case may be), " they certainly are very 

 fine. My mother laid out that piece of the border in the 

 year '42. This walk beside the wall has been changed? 



1 Issercleran. 



