ON THE OTHER SIDE. A PLEA FOR SAVAGERY. 185 



scotched savagery an unextinguished, inextinguish- 

 able strain of the wild man of the woods. Scratch 

 him, and beneath his skin is Rousseau-Thoreau. 

 Scratch him again in the same place, and beneath 

 his second skin see the brown hide of the aboriginal 

 Briton, the dweller in wattled abodes, who knew 

 an earlier England than this, that had swamps and 

 forests, roadless wastes and unbridled winter floods, 

 and strange beasts that no man could tame. Even 

 he (" the sweetest lamb that ever loved a bear ") 

 will prate to you of the Bohemian delights of an un- 

 gardened country, where "the white man's poetry" 

 has not denied the landscape, and the Britisher 

 shall be free to take his pleasure sadly. 



Let us not be too hard, then, on that dislike of 

 beauty, that worship of the barbaric which we are 

 apt to condemn as distempered vagaries, for they 

 denote maladies incident to the age, which are 

 neither surprising nor ignoble. This disdain for Art 

 in a garden, this abhorrence of symmetry, this pre- 

 ference for the rude and shaggy, what is it but a new 

 turn given to old instincts, the new Don Quixote 

 sighing for primaevalism ! This ruthlessness of the 

 followers of the " immortal Brown" who would 

 navvy away the residue of the old-fashioned English 

 gardens ; who live to reverse tradition and to scatter 

 the lessons of the past to the winds ; what is it but 

 a new quest of the bygone, the knight-errantry of 

 the civilized man, when turned inside out ! 



And for yet another reason is the garden unable 

 to meet the moods of the age. In discussing the 



