A GARDEN DIARY 175 



itself up like a scroll, and they are once again 

 in very deed, though but for a little while, as 

 they once were. 



There is a spot in a hill-wood barely a mile 

 from this door, to which I have been a good 

 many times this spring, and which each time I 

 go gives me a curiously homely feeling. Ireland 

 seems to breathe in it, even West Ireland, though 

 I can hardly say why, the only apparent reason 

 being the rather unpatriotic one that the fir 

 trees, of which the wood consists, have been 

 sadly neglected. It covers an unusually steep bit 

 of hillside, and below expands into a tangle of 

 brakes and brambles, circling about a hollow 

 place, which in my mind's eye I conceive to be 

 a boggy pool, though, were I to clamber down 

 to it, I should probably find it to be dust-dry. 

 Far and near not a roof is within sight, else 

 were that illusion for a certainty lost. More- 

 over, the only bit of distance visible seems to 

 be houseless also, and in these grey, rather 

 despondent - looking spring days wears just a 

 touch of that wistful indefiniteness, the lack of 

 which, one is apt to assert, amongst many beau- 

 ties, to be England's most conspicuous blemish. 



Until the last great summons comes for us, we 

 can never, happily, entirely lose what has once 

 formed a part of our little mental patrimony. 

 We may deliberately discard it, or, what oftener 

 happens, it may get unintentionally overlaid with 



