Forest-trees colossal Cedar, more like a small wood than a single tree, so 

 in the many-branched and so spreading was it. Whenever big trees 

 Garden g row within the enclosure of four walls they appear not only 

 to gain in dignity themselves, but to shed it out again over 

 everything which their shadow touches. Of course we are aware 

 that big trees are not, and never have been, welcomed by the 

 gardener. To the more strictly professional members of that 

 craft they are in fact anathema, and that a flower-garden 

 presided over by a row of hungry Elms is likely to be a 

 remarkably hungry-looking garden no one can conscientiously 

 deny. At the same time a single broad spot of shade is often 

 a gain rather than otherwise even horticulturally, while from 

 every other point of view aspects can there be any question ? 



But if the chief, the great Yew is far from being the only 

 impressive-looking personality in this garden. The walls them- 

 selves, for instance, strike me as being curiously beautiful. I 

 say curiously beautiful, because limestone walls have the habit, 

 unfortunately, of being curiously ugly. That however is the 

 case where no grey or golden crust of lichen has formed over 

 them, and such a growth is the work of years, one which can 

 no more be produced in a hurry than can the similar incrusta- 

 tion which adorns some ancient Roman sarcophagus. When- 

 ever the tax on my credulity is not too brutally severe, I 

 like to imagine that not alone its mosses, lichens, and small 

 ferns but every plant which I see growing upon a wall is 

 spontaneous and self-sown. Here to the best of my belief 

 they really are, but, even where time will not allow of so 

 high a degree of perfection as that, a good deal may be done 

 to disguise the artificiality of the process by a really cunning 

 hand, one that will not break huge evident breaches in the sides 



8 



