148 A BOOK ABOUT THE GARDEN. 



For example, and to pass to the second part of rny 

 lecture, there is Spring bedding-out, in my eyes by 

 far the most attractive feature of modern horti- 

 culture. The most beautiful because the most 

 natural, gladdening our hearts with a new happi- 

 ness and with new hopes, just when Nature herself 

 awakes in 



" The delicious trouble of the spring," 



when the sap is rising in the branches on which the 

 thrushes sing, and the child finds the first violet 

 blue-eyed and sweet as childhood itself upon the 

 sunny southern bank, or comes tottering into the 

 broad green woodland "ride," holding up a primrose 

 in its tiny fist triumphantly, as one to whom had just 

 been given the first prize for a hand-bouquet. Then 

 it is that the gardener's art, the art 



" Which does mend Nature ; change it rather : but 

 The art itself is Nature,'' 



changes and mends most successfully that which the 

 first gardener marred and disfigured, because it is 

 then most in union with Nature, assisting, developing, 

 obeying, copying, as a loving, reverent disciple, and 

 not dictating nor innovating, as a proud omniscient 

 lord. In a spring garden we " change and mend " 

 only by multiplication, and by such improvement, or 

 rather restoration, as vigilant care and cultural art 

 can give. All our charming varieties of Viola, and 

 Primula, and Myosotis, and Anemone, and Erica, for 

 example, are collected and cherished there, whnn the 



