Rose, each white Sweet-pea "on tiptoe for a flight," and Summer, 

 illumined every flower till for the moment it would seem that Fascination 

 you saw jewels of silver and gold sparkling with emeralds and o f Gardens 

 rubies. 



The secret of this small garden's fascination lay, it may be, 

 in its mystery. Small though it be, from no one point could 

 the whole, or even half of it be seen at one time. Between the 

 many narrow intersecting paths, flowers of various kinds had 

 grown into clumps of such grand luxuriance as to hide all 

 others beyond, save where perchance some blue Delphinium, 

 exquisitely pale, aspired above the rest ; or if one caught sight of 

 hanging gardens of sweet Roses : or in some opening, a gate-head 

 of fretted iron empurpled with large-flowered Clematis. Here 

 the green turf lay between an orange and scarlet glow made by 

 rampant Alstroemeria and scarlet Lychnis, or Summer light- 

 ning as children call old Parkinson's favourite " flower of Bristol 

 and Constantinople " with many a little upright pillar of lilac 

 Linaria intermixed. There, fragrant Lilies stand together like 

 white angels in a dream, calling silently across the Roses. . . . 



These Lilies ! they stood at the meeting of four green 

 grassy ways. Divinely tall, for the season favoured them, the 

 faces of them each met mine : and they shone as though fresh 

 from Elysian meadows, shining like the face of Moses shone 

 when he came down from the mountain. In the memory of 

 such pure radiant presence, how can one sit down to write dull 

 prose ? 



All plants love an open corner : they do the best that is in 

 them when so placed. Within the cloistered angle of an old 

 Apple espalier, grew in this garden a white Moss Rose. The 

 spread of its branches made shelter for a wondrous Japan Iris 



6.3 



