THE USE OF GARDENS 



from all possibility of degeneration, cannot be considered surprising, 

 for this piece of ground, beautified by the garden-maker's art, is 

 practically a stage on which have been played many episodes in a 

 family history. It has associations which endear it to him, and it 

 is full of memories that add much to the pleasure of his existence. 

 If the particular features of the garden were destroyed, if it were 

 allowed to run wild or to grow ragged and unkempt, there would 

 be a loss not only of worthy example or artistic invention but, as 

 well, of a place made memorable by its surrounding of wholesome 

 sentiment. 



Although it is only the possessor of the old garden who can fully 

 appreciate the meaning of its associations there are many people 

 to whom its sentiment will make a very real appeal. Indeed, for 

 all thinking men not devoid of aesthetic understanding, there is a 

 fascination in this sentiment to which they cannot fail to respond. 

 They fall readily enough under the spell of a garden which, though 

 it shows in its rich maturity all the evidences of age, yet seems to 

 have the power of indefinitely renewing its youth ; and they can 

 thoroughly enjoy the feast of beauty which is set before them as a 

 result of the prolonged alliance between nature and the guardians of 

 the place. No special acquaintance with the history of the garden 

 is needed to enable them to realise its artistic significance as an 

 exquisite development of a decorative intention or to feel the charm of 

 its poetic suggestion — these are the foundations upon which its senti- 

 ment is based and the sources of its power to give unfailing delight. 

 There is, certainly, something rarely convincing in that harmony of 

 effect which a garden acquires when years of careful tending have 

 brought out all that was best in the original design — when the care 

 that has been given to it has been directed towards the development 

 of its best features and has not been wasted in attempts to bring it 

 into agreement with some passing fashion in gardening. Its lichen- 

 covered walls, its mossy steps, its stately trees well grown and firmly 

 rooted, its masses of bright-coloured flowers, are all parts of a picture 

 which arrests attention at the first glance, and gratifies the senses 

 more amply the more closely it is studied. There is an air of 

 stability in such a garden, because everything in it has grown old 

 together and because no new note has been allowed to introduce a 

 discord into the perfectly balanced harmony. It would be an oddly 

 constituted mind that could remain unconscious of the aesthetic dis- 

 tinction which belongs to maturity so noble and so consistent, or 

 that could be insensible to the poetic suggestion in such rounding 

 off of human endeavour by nature's dainty hand. 



xv 



