ON THE OTHER SIDE. A PLEA FOR SAVAGERY. 187 



through pure ignorance of wrong. Where no law 

 is, there can be no transgression. Between these 

 two points is no middle-ground, either in the fields 

 of Art or of Religion. 



To apply this to a garden. Untaught, lawless 

 Nature may present things indiscriminately, as they 

 are, the casual, the accidental, the savage, in their 

 native dress, or undress, in all their rugged reality, 

 and not be ashamed. But the artist-gardener, know- 

 ing good and evil, exercising free-will in his garden- 

 craft, must choose only what he may rightly have, 

 and employ only what his trained judgment or the 

 unwritten commandments of good taste will allow. 



There you have the art of a garden. But 

 because of its necessary exclusiveness, because all 

 Nature is not there, the garden, though of the best, 

 the most far-reaching in its application of art-re- 

 sources, fails to satisfy all man's imaginative cravings. 



Your garden, I said, will serve you many a good 

 turn. Here one may come to play the truant 

 from petty worries, to find quiet harbourage in the 

 chopping sea of life's casual ups and downs ; but 

 when real trouble comes, on occasions of spiritual 

 tension, or mental conflict, or heavy depression, then 

 the perfect beauty of the garden offends ; the garden 

 has no respect for sadness then it almost mocks 

 and flaunts you ; it smiles the same, though your 

 child die, and then instinct sends you away from the 

 lap of Art to the bosom of Nature 



" Knowing that Nature never did betray 

 The heart that loved her." 



