OUR SENTIMENTAL GARDEN 



as hundreds of others, as a Tree of LibertyPoputus, 

 emblematic of sans-culotte ascendancyat the time when 

 the royal Bastille, emblem of another form of tyranny, was 

 laid low. 



For some cryptic reason, by the way, the democratic 

 Poplar, which had subsisted through many changes of 

 regime, and had become undoubtedly too ornamental a 

 mark of antiquity to be destroyed, was never honoured by 

 the flights of our banderoles. Perhaps it was a result of 

 political prejudice, which in France characteristically 

 affects the views even of scholars at the hornbook stage of 

 life. Or perhaps it was that the old Peuplier was the 

 site of the disciplinary punishment known as piquetthe 

 playground equivalent of our nursery "corner/ 7 



Poplar and gummy Plum-trees, Lilac and Acacias, court- 

 yard and indeed the whole Institution, had already dis- 

 appeared when I bethought myself, for the first time after 

 so many years of oblivion, to go and gaze upon the scene 

 once more. It was quite in middle life. I had lately been 

 reading that sad and strangely affecting work, "Peter 

 Ibbetson," the first, and to my mind by far the best, of the 

 three novels written by Georges du Maurier in the late 

 autumn of his days. By the thousands who for so many 

 years had, week after week, enjoyed the delicate humour 

 and pencilling of the great Punch artist, the book was 

 received with a favour that paved the way for the greater 

 popular success of " Trilby/ 7 But I doubt whether it ever 

 appealed to any denizen of our planet as intimately as to 

 the Master of the House. 

 78 



