78 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 



flower, luxuriating up there in lofty, safe 

 seclusion. Seen from below, so freshly 

 green against the blue, these wild things 

 do to us enhance the picturesqueness 

 of the old wall ; and while looking up at 

 them thus, one feels in some degree that 

 curious sense of infinity, the reason of 

 which no one ever has explained. The 

 Evelyns in their day would have treated 

 them as unruly weeds, and would have 

 made short work with them. Not half-an- 

 hour hence, when the Traveller turns the 

 corner, and his gold face looks the other 

 way, the old door and the wooden bricks 

 with the vision of that summer day two 

 hundred and five years back, will fade fast 

 and be lost in shadow. Another old wall 

 on the other side of the lawn is also 

 propped at intervals with heavy buttresses. 

 The aspect is north, and on these rude 

 masses of old brick grow my wild gardens. 

 The buttresses are gnarled and irregularly 

 scored and furrowed by huge ivy stems 

 veiled under moss and lichen. 



The finest of the two ' gardens ' is that 

 one nearest Syringa and the greenhouse 



