ON THE THEORY OF A GARDEN. 21 



knowledge, and the garden will serve to interpret the 

 past and make it live again before our eyes. For 

 the old place is (to use the journalist's phrase) an 

 " object lesson" of old manners; it is a proof of 

 ancient genius, a clue to old romance, a legacy of 

 vague desire. The many items of the place the 

 beds and walks with their special trick of "style" 

 the parterre, the promenoir, the maze, the quin- 

 cunx, the terraces, the extravagances in ever-green 

 sculptures of which Pope spoke what are they 

 but the mould and figure of old-world thought, 

 down to its most characteristic caprice ! The as- 

 sertive air of these things their prominence in 

 the garden-scenery bespeak their importance in 

 the scenery of old life. It was thus that our fore- 

 fathers made the world about them picturesque, thus 

 that they coloured their life-dreams and fitted an 

 adjunct pleasure to every humour, thus that they 

 climbed by flower-strewn stairs to the realm of the 

 ideal and stimulated their sense of beauty. 



And if further proof be needed of the large hold 

 the garden and its contents had of the affections of 

 past generations, we have but to turn to the old 

 poets, and to note how the texture of the speech, 

 the groundwork of the thought, of men like Milton, 

 Herrick, Vaughan, Herbert, Donne (not to mention 

 prose-writers) is saturated through and through 

 with garden-imagery. 



In the case of an old garden, mellowed by time, 

 we have, I say, to note something that goes beyond 

 mere surface-beauty. Here we may expect to find 



