such as in the more ancient cloisters grimace and gibber at us Phantom 

 from every coign and angle of the masonry ! Ownership 



Few things in this rather incongruous world are perhaps 

 odder than the fashion in which pursuits often not in the 

 least important in themselves grow important by mere dint 

 of exercise, so that what at first seem even to their doers 

 trivial efforts, come to wear after a time quite a serious and 

 responsible aspect. So I find it on this occasion, and not 

 myself possessing upon this coast, I may observe, as much garden 

 ground as would furnish a decent lark's cage a sort of ghost 

 or simulacrum of ownership, the phantom of the real thing, 

 seems to have evolved itself in the course of these saunterings, so 

 that now I find myself glancing instinctively around me, criticis- 

 ing this garden, rearranging that one, disposing of the other, 

 with all the matter-of-course dignity suitable to an actual 

 owner. Gladly still in this same owner-like spirit ! would I 

 pursue our investigations into the county Wicklow, where 

 even more fascinating gardens await us. Unfortunately the 

 impulse is one that must summarily be repressed, no less than 

 another carrying me inland, towards what may be called the 

 extra-Dublin-Bay area, where one garden especially beckons 

 alluringly a garden behind whose iron gates are to be seen vistas 

 of seemingly endless flower borders, as it were gardens within 

 gardens, converging towards an ancient stone tank which 

 stands half hidden in alpine plants, and overhung with climbing 

 Roses and all manner of other ramblers. 1 Such allurements, 

 however, must at all costs be resisted, else would the space 

 allotted in this book to Irish gardens overflow the whole, as 

 I have known happen before now to flower-gardens of my 



1 Bushy Park. 



