86 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 



they are better placed : one can enjoy 

 them more intimately, walk round them, 

 or pull down a branch to smell the lilac 

 cones. But our white lilac, most refined 

 and loveliest of all, grows nowhere unen- 

 cumbered with shrubbery. 



If the forest of the Fantaisie were but 

 half a mile round instead of half a rood, it 

 would be perfect. Its position gives variety, 

 that quality which charms as much in a 

 garden as does the play of expression in a 

 human face. It is as if in following the 

 green garden ways we went * from grave to 

 gay, from lively to severe.' 



From the sunny masses of pink and 

 white Phlox repens, blue Gentian, and 

 narcissus poeticus, in the wildest profu- 

 sion, ending in a wholly indescribable glow 

 of azalea mollis, the path winds along 

 smooth grass, and close-trimmed laurel 

 into the woodland shade, between great 

 clumps of purple iris growing among stones 

 and flints, over-run with stonecrop, violas, 

 and fumitory. Here, though so tiny that 

 some one the other day, took it for a child's 

 garden, there is something of the dim quiet 



