OUR SENTIMENTAL GARDEN 



oblivion. Another now detaches itself in the same way 

 from the clouds of the very distant past. 

 It belongs to the following summer. A perfume of 

 Glycine still lingers about it, no doubt/ for there again, 

 upon the stone and through the curvetting iron-work 

 balconies of the fair Louis XV house overlooking the park 

 of St. Cloud, pale silvery green 

 leafage, with here and there a 

 cluster of faint blue, spreads in a 

 well-regulated display widely 

 different, though, from the foam- 

 ing profusion of the Mesnil. But 

 !. \fthe impression more specially 

 associated with those happy St. 

 Cloud days is the incense of 

 the Sweet Briar. 



What has happened I pause and 

 ask indignantly to the Sweet- 

 Briar of the world? Whither 

 has the celestial, the entrancing 

 scent of the true Eglantine 

 vanished? Our twentieth cen- 

 tury Briar is still there is no 

 gainsaying it a delicious being, 

 in its ephemeral exquisiteness of 

 flower and its pleasant, if but 

 slightly more lasting, leafy odour. 

 But never, in subsequent life, 



have I captured again the sudden delight first brought to 

 my childish nostrils by a puff of breeze that had passed over 

 some hidden clump of sweet Eglantine. This first impression 

 54 



