326 



GARDENS OLD AND NEW 



appreciated before pencil was put to paper. The 

 individuality of the site has not been crushed and 

 smothered by the clumsy and brutal superincumbency 

 of a tyrannous structure, foreign to its nature and 

 ignorant of its idiosyncrasy ; but it has been 

 heightened and vivified by an intelligent ordering in 

 sympathy with its undeveloped qualities and in 

 unison with its best possibilities. The whole thing 

 therefore holds together, there is neither dissonance 

 nor contrariety. In size and in character, in arrange- 

 ment and in method, the house and garden suit the 

 spot, and the spot is the due setting for the archi- 

 tectural features which occupy it. They are the 

 complement of each other. This particular bit of 

 Nature wanted precisely such a creation of Art to 

 enhance and complete it. and this creation of Art could 



brick-banded chalk, and opening into a courtyard, in 

 'he middle of which the Pompeian boy pours water 

 rrom his wine-skin into a little pool at his feet. The 

 sun plays delightedly in this engaging trap for 

 varied light and shadow, and the plash of the 

 water, in its hot and brilliant centre, refreshes 

 the visitor entering from the dusty road. Across 

 the courtyard the house door stands invitingly 

 open. But we must harden our hearts and turn our 

 backs upon it, for the garden alone is our theme 

 to-day ; the interior may be seen and read about in the 

 first volume of" In English Homes." We, therefore, 

 turn to our left and out through a wide arch into the 

 main garden square. It is bounded on the west side 

 by the house and on the east and north by the old 

 enclosing wall, so that it occupies the full width of 



CLUSTER ROSES. 



not have found another bit of Nature so well qualified 

 and adapted to its perfect presentment. This 

 simply means that an artist and not a tradesman has 

 been at work here. The architectural profession 

 contains both, and we are glad that we are not called 

 upon to decide which of the two predominates. 



Not only was the piece of ground, as a whole, 

 very limited in extent, but the higher and flatter 

 portion, lying along the road and behind the old wall, 

 was narrow. The lover of that respectable stupidity, 

 the " carriage sweep," would have spent sleepless 

 nights over the problem of introducing his favourite 

 feature and would have produced a most common- 

 place failure. As it is, an archway made in the old 

 wall and fitted with a wrought-iron grille gives direct 

 entrance from the road into a cloister, vaulted in 



the upper flat before it falls southward towards the 

 orchard. Even so, as the pictures of the pergola, 

 which is its chief feature, show, there is some diver- 

 sity of level which admits of the flights of steps 

 pleasantly breaking and relieving the long run of the 

 broad flagged way. This portion of the garden 

 swings round so as to occupy, on its main level, an 

 area of grass and flagstone in front of the eastern end 

 of the rmin or south elevation of the house, whence 

 there is access to it through another arch, closed, at 

 will, by a massive oak door. The platform we are now 

 on, its simplicity modified by the adequate base and 

 column of the sundial, dominates towards the south 

 and the west two lower-lying garden sections of wholly 

 different character. The great segmental stairway to 

 the south (followed by other circles, flagged and 



