1 84 GARDEN-CRAFT. 



It will smile, or look grave, or be dreamily fanciful 

 almost at your bidding. If your bent be that way it 

 will minister to your imaginative reverie, and almost 

 surfeit you with its floods of lazy music. If you are 

 hot, or weary, .or dispirited, or touched with ennui, 

 its calm atmosphere will lay the dust and lessen the 

 fret of your life. Yet let us not blink the fact 

 just because all Nature is not represented here ; 

 because the girdle of the garden walls narrows our 

 view of the world at large, and excludes more of 

 Nature's physiognomy than it includes ; because the 

 garden is, as Sir Walter truly says, entirely "a child 

 of Art " ; the place, be it never so fair, falls short of 

 man's imaginative craving, and, when put to the 

 push, fails to supply the stimulus his varying moods 

 require. Art's sounding-line will never fathom 

 human nature's emotional depths. 



Nay, one need not be that interesting product 

 of civilisation, the over-civilised artist who writes 

 books, and paints pictures, and murmurs rhyme 

 that 



" Beats with light wing against the ivory gate, 

 Telling a tale not too importunate 

 To those who in the sleepy region stay, 

 Lulled by the singer of an empty day." 



There is the ennuyd of the clubs whom you are 

 proud to meet in Pall Mall, not a hair of his hat 

 turned, not a wrinkle marring the sit of his coat ; 

 meeting him thus and there you would not dream of 

 supposing that this exquisite trophy of the times is 

 a prey to reactionary desires ! Yet deep down in 

 the hidden roots of his being lies a layer of un- 



