"The true pleasure of a garden,** 



BACON. 



APRIL 



" pURE colour is rest of heart," says Richard Jefferies ; and 

 A surely that rest is to be found at the present moment. 

 Were the hedges ever more green or of such purity ? or the 

 blossoms those such as are now found in bloom more 

 chaste ? Spring comes to our Western gardens with all her 

 winsome trickeries of grace, and with liberal hand scatters 

 the simplest of blossoms, in colours never gaudy, in pattern 

 never intricate ; she brings with her the sweet new light that 

 is never wearisome as sometimes in the depth of Summer 

 and shadows never unlovely. For the green of foliage the 

 new, half-fledged leaf, generously moulded, and bud beautifully 

 formed is always a joy against the grey of sky; and the 

 morning brilliancy, the chequered noon, the night irradiances, 

 are backgrounds of beauty to the April garden. 



Now is the first chord of colour struck, silenced since 

 Autumn stood in his coat of golden mail. A tender note is 

 sounded in the bush of the American currant, hung all over 

 with tassels of warm pink ; next to it stands a dark-green 

 box-tree, flecked everywhere with a lighter hue. The laures- 

 tine has opened to fulness its corymbs of creamy flowers, 

 seeming to be satisfied at last, after having waited for so long. 

 These and countless other blossoms the tulips, oxlips, and 

 polyanthus tell us that Spring has come to our gardens of 

 the West. But a deeper, truer note is struck amid the border 

 blossoms, where a shaft of sunlight catches the rain-wet wall- 



73 



