A Town restricted area, have so far been explored ! Leaving aside the 

 Garden strictly official ones, which are congregated for the most 

 part within the Phoenix Park places presided over by mere 

 birds of passage, " well-meaning officials," darkly ignorant as 

 a rule, good souls, of that unaccountable world which they have 

 come to govern, including as likely as not the contents of their 

 own flower-beds leaving these entirely aside, the conscientious 

 observer next comes to a halt in the very middle of the town 

 of Dublin itself. 



Town gardens as all who have studied the subject are 

 aware form a separate and well-recognised genus, and as such 

 are habitually prescribed for by their own specialists. Here, 1 

 save by the inevitable limitations of space, such a specialist 

 would be puzzled to recognise one of his or her patients in 

 the gay tide, not of temporary, but of permanent greenery and 

 floweriness, which spreads and flourishes upon every side. It is a 

 garden which by sheer force of circumstances has grown up 

 in separate sections, each section being divided from its 

 neighbour by a wall of demarcation. Over these walls the 

 hand of knowledge has been especially laid. Walking 

 beside them, or dipping under an arch into the next 

 compartment, the notion of being in an ordinary town 

 garden slips wholly away from your mind, and is replaced by 

 the image of some sort of academic cloister, a cloister made gay 

 with the Pinks, Irises, Saxifrages, Wall-flowers, Snapdragons 

 which crowd its top, or look down at you out of every niche 

 in its sides, cunningly concealed water-pipes ministering here 

 and there to their requirements, the tongue-like faces of the 

 last-named flowers suggesting to the eye of fancy gargoyles, 



1 The garden of Alexandra College. 

 22 



