198 A BOOK ABOUT THE GARDEN. 



flowers, it is needless to expatiate on the comfort 

 which their brightness and their sweetness bring to 

 the ailing, for all who have ever suffered (and who has 

 not ?) know their cheering influence in the sick-room. 

 " Oh, how I love them ! " once sighed a dying girl to 

 me. " I dreamed last night that He stood by them, 

 and said, ' Consider the lilies, how they grow.' I 

 think I feel sure there will be flowers in heaven." 

 And these words are carved upon the stone by her 

 grave : " My Beloved is gone down into His garden, to 

 gather lilies. I am my Beloved's and my Beloved is 

 mine." 



Let us leave now my crystal palaces, and spend a 

 few minutes in my open ground. A small space,* 

 much smaller than it seems, because the surface rises 

 and falls, and no boundary lines are seen, but full of 

 treasures precious beyond words to me. By lowering 

 here, and by raising there, and by a little thoughtful 

 arrangement of bank and wall and shrub, I have 

 realized a score of cosy nooks and corners, in which I 

 have more privacy, and, as I believe, move pleasure 

 than can be found in your great modern gardens, 

 cleared by the axe, and prepared by spirit-level and 

 line and compass, for a vast geometrical design. 

 There, you see, is our little fernery (I say our, because 

 I have an excellent coadjutor, fellow-gardener, and 

 forewoman in my sister Rose) ; there, as her name 

 reminds me, our bank of roses, on which our critical 



* The Curate's garden and glass is kept in order by himself, 

 his sister, and his man-of-all-work. Now and then, but from 

 charity more than necessity, a labourer is set on to dig, or an 

 old woman to sweep and weed. 



