— as if it were some passing mirage, built up for the moment of towering 

 masses of pearly vapour. 



So does an ancient building come back into sympathy with earth and 

 cloud. Its stones are carved and fretted by the wind and rain of 

 centuries ; tiny mosses have grown in their cavities ; the decay of these 

 has formed mould which has spread into every joint and fissure. Here 

 grasses and many kinds of wild plants have found a home, until, viewed 

 from near at hand, the mighty walls and their sustaining buttresses are 

 seen to be shaggy with vegetation. 



These immense buttresses on the meadow side come down to a walled 

 terrace ; their foundations doubtless far below the visible base. The 

 terrace level is some twelve feet above the grassy space below. The 

 grass then slopes easily away for a distance of a few hundred feet to the 

 alluvial flat of the actual meadow-land. 



Large fig-trees grow at the foot of the wall, rising a few feet above the 

 parapet of the terrace, from which the fruit is conveniently gathered. 



It is in the deep, well-sheltered bays between the feet of the giant 

 buttresses that the most interesting of the modern flower gardening at 

 Berkeley is done. 



White Lilies grow like weeds in the rich red loam, and there are fine 

 groups of many of the best hardy plants and shrubby things, gathered 

 together and well placed by the late Georgina Lady Fitzhardinge, a true 

 lover of good flowers and a woman of sound instinct and well-balanced 

 taste respecting things beautiful both indoors and out. 



The chief relic of the older gardening at Berkeley is the remains of 

 the yew hedge that inclosed the bowling-green on three sides ; the fourth 

 side having for its boundary the high retaining wall that supports the 

 entrance road beyond the outer gate. The yews, still clipped into bold 

 rounded forms, may have formed a trim hedge in Tudor days, and the 

 level space of turf, which is reached from the terrace by a flight of 

 downward steps that passes under an arch of the old yews, lies cool and 

 sheltered from the westering sun by the stout bulwark of their ancient shade, 



The yew arch in the picture shows where the terrace level descends 

 to the bowling-green. The great buttresses of the main castle wall are 

 behind the spectator. A bowery Clematis is in full bloom over the steps 



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