io GARDEN-CRAFT. 



Here it may be objected that the ordinary garden 

 is, after all, only a compromise between the common 

 and the ideal : half may be for the lust of the eye, 

 yet half is for domestic drudgery ; half is for beauty, 

 half for use. The garden is contrived " a double 

 debt to pay." Yonder mass of foliage that bounds 

 the garden, with its winding intervals of turf and 

 look of expansiveness, it serves to conceal villadom 

 and the hulking paper-factory beyond ; that rock- 

 garden with its developed geological formation, 

 dotted over with choice Alpine plants, that the 

 stranger comes to see. It is nothing but the 

 quarry from whence the stone was dug that built 

 the house. Those banks of evergreens, full of choice 

 specimens, what are they but on one side the screen 

 to your kitchen stuff, and on the other side, the 

 former tenant's contrivance to assist him in for- 

 getting his neighbour? Even so, my friend, an it 

 please you ! You are of those who, in Sainte-Beuve's 

 phrase, would sever a bee in two, if you could ! 



The garden, you say, is a compromise between 

 the common and the ideal. Yet nobility comes in 

 low disguises. We have seen that the garden is 

 wild Nature elevated and transformed by man's skill 

 in selection and artistic concentration wild things to 

 which man's art has given dignity. The common 

 flowers of the cottager's garden tell of centuries of 

 collaboration. The flowers and shrubs and trees 

 with which you have adorned your own grounds 

 were won for you by the curiosity, the aspiration, 

 the patient roaming and ceaseless research of a long 



