x PREFACE 



them ! Most emphatically so, when I see the sun-bright 

 garden in all the joy and glory of this royal month of 

 May now, with Nature at full flood and flow of Spring! 

 with the great elms in the background, half-drest in a fairy 

 garment of budding green. The severity and fatal length 

 of the long winter endured in the garden though many 

 a tender shrub and plant has died of it is forgotten in a 

 moment ; and indeed it seems on the whole almost to have 

 inspired fresh life and vigour of growth in those delicious 

 things which we call Spring flowers. The rich abundance of 

 our early favourites this year is undiminished. Though 

 long in coming, now that they are here at last they seem 

 more brilliantly beautiful than ever. If any long-loved 

 habitual pleasure of the garden fails to-day, it is that 

 birds are fewer. There are fewer thrushes, and we 

 miss the rapture of their music. Blackbirds must 

 know the secret of some less precarious means of living, 

 for they are as numerous as ever. Yet somehow 

 Merulas magic note is, or so it seems to me, less wholly 

 dear than is the singing of the thrush. The air he sings 

 is so brief, the burden of it so sad ! He only sings over 



