150 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN 



and when no day is like the last, but adds one or naore 

 treasures to be welcomed that have long been out of 

 his sight ; and so when each day brings a fresh plea- 

 sure, the earnest of, perhaps, fuller beauties to come, 

 but scarcely of keener pleasures. At no other time of 

 the year can the gardener have such a variety of hopes 

 and expectations daily renewed and added to as he has 

 in spring ; and it must have been from some such feel- 

 ing as this, that when Bacon drew out his ideal garden 

 and stocked it with fair flowers of the whole year, his 

 object was not to have perpetual summer, but perpetual 

 spring — ' My meaning is that you may have ver i^er- 

 petuu?n as the place affords.' 



' As the place affords ' gives a very large margin to 

 the time of the year at which the opening of spring 

 may be placed. Fixing it by the time at which 

 flowers first begin to show their new life, it may in 

 many places be fixed even in January, for it must be 

 an exceptionally cold January that cannot show some 

 flowers. I may mention three that may be found in 

 many gardens in January, and which are very interest- 

 ing as giving a direct denial to the common idea that 

 strongly scented flowers require bright sunshine to 

 bring out their scents. They are the sweet-scented 

 coltsfoot, with the scent of heliotrope, a native of the 

 south of Europe, naturalised in some parts of England ; 



