ON THE THEORY OF A GARDEN. 27 



old garden. The very trees have an "ancient 

 melody of an inward agony " : 



" The place is silent and aware 

 It has had its scenes, its joys, and crimes, 

 But that is its own affair" 



even Nature forgets to be her cold, impassive self, 

 and puts on a sympathetic-waiting look in a spot so 

 intricately strewn and meshed over with the fibres of 

 human experience. Long and close intimacy with 

 mankind under various aspects witness of things 

 that happened to squires, dames, priests, courtiers, 

 servitors, page, or country-maid, in the roundabout 

 of that " curious, restless, clamorous being which 

 we call life"- has somehow tinged the place with 

 a sensibility (one had almost said a wizardry) not 

 properly its own. And this superadded quality 

 reaches to the several parts of the garden and is not 

 confined to the scene as a whole. Each inanimate 

 item of the place, each spot, seems invested with a 

 gift of attraction to have a hidden tongue that 

 could syllable forgotten names to possess a power 

 of fixing your attention, of fastening itself upon your 

 mind, as though it had become, in a sense, humanised, 

 and claimed kindred with you as related to that 

 secret group with whose fortunes it was allied, with 

 whose passions it had held correspondence, and 

 were letting you know it could speak an if it would 

 of 



" All the ways of men, so vain and melancholy." 



