290 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN 



And a country parson without some knowledge of 

 plants is surely as incomplete as a country parsonage 

 without a garden. Certainly he deprives himself of 

 much pleasure, and in some respects of usefulness. I 

 am thankful that my own lot has been cast for me in 

 the country, yet I can fully understand and appreciate 

 the actual pleasure which an active earnest clergyman 

 finds in the crowded, unlovely streets, and even in the 

 slums of a densely populated city cure, and I can even 

 sympathise with his dislike to the quiet stagnation (as 

 he would call it) of a country parsonage ; but I cannot 

 understand a clergyman whose lot has been cast in the 

 country, and who has accepted the lot, shutting his 

 eyes to all the beauties which surround him and which 

 come up to his very doors, and to whom the change of 

 seasons, and even the changes from day to day that he 

 must see, are only changes from one kind of dulness to 

 another. Such a man must be wretched in a country 

 parsonage, but I have not much pity for him. 



I need not describe the ideal English parsonage and 

 its garden. It has been described over and over again, 

 and indeed it has passed into a proverb, so that when a 

 house is described as ' like an ordinary English parson- 

 age,' as Wordsworth's home is described, we know at once 

 what it means. We picture to ourselves a building of 

 moderate size — not pretentious — neither a mansion nor 



