10 A GARDEN DIARY 



That he or she ought to have been made so is 

 quite true, but as a matter of fact, have they ? 

 We are moulded out of exceedingly stubborn 

 stuff, and are not often ennobled, I suspect, 

 by the landscapes that surround us, any more 

 than we are by the pursuits we follow, or the 

 names that we carry about with us. Furthermore 

 the essentials of all landscape show a consider- 

 able similarity. Much the same sort of clouds 

 and sunshine, much the same sort of nights 

 and days, much the same sort of summers and 

 winters, visit alike the tamest and the wildest 

 of them. Even the more dramatic and exciting 

 fluctuations snow, and hail, storm, and lightning 

 exhibit a greater impartiality than might have 

 been expected. The gale that has just unroofed 

 your lordly tower, has equally swept the tiles 

 off our humble porch ; in the same way that 

 moralists are fond of assuring us that sickness 

 and sorrow, loss and pain, old age and death, 

 fall equally upon the homes of beggars and of 

 kings. 



Never having belonged to the last of these 

 classes, I cannot take it upon me to answer for 

 the discomforts that pertain to it. With regard 

 to the other, though I have often seen myself 

 figuring, or upon the point of figuring, amongst 

 its sad and tattered ranks, the impression has 

 never been a particularly agreeable one, and I 

 prefer, therefore, not to dwell upon it. It was 



