82 GARDEN-CRAFT. 



breadth of half-a-crown, like an embroidered star 

 of many colours. . . . He raises many striped 

 hollies by inoculation," &c. ("Gleanings in Old 

 Garden Literature," Hazlitt, p. 240.) 



And yet one last observation I would like to 

 make, remembering Bacon's subtilty, and how his 

 every utterance is the sum of matured analytical 

 thought. This yearning for wild nature that makes 

 itself felt all through the Essay, this scheme for a 

 " natural wildness" touching the hem of artificiality ; 

 this provision for mounts of some pretty height 

 " to look abroad in the fields " ; this care for the 

 " Heath or Desart in the going forth, planted not in 

 any order;" the " little Heaps in the Nature of 

 Molehills (such as are in wild Heaths) to be set with 

 pleasant herbs, wild thyme, pinks, periwinkle, and 

 the like Low Flowers being withall sweet and sightly " 

 what does it imply? Primarily, it declares the 

 artist who knows the value of contrast, the interest 

 of blended contrariness ; it is the cultured man's 

 hankering after a many-faced Nature readily acces- 

 sible to him in his many moods ; it tells, too, of the 

 drift of the Englishman towards familiar landscape 

 effects, the garden - mimicry which sets towards 

 pastoral Nature ; but above and beyond all else, it is 

 a true Baconian stroke. Is not the man's innermost 

 self here revealed, who in his eagerest moments 

 struggled for detachment of mind, held his will in 

 leash according to his own astute maxim " not to 

 engage oneself too peremptorily in anything, but 

 ever to have either a window open to fly out of, or a 



