KINGS IN GARDENS 



There is a stateliness and yet there is a hint ot 

 the stage about it." 



" Don't you think," said the king, " that there 

 is a hint of the stage in everything ? If you are 

 a poet you conjure up backgrounds in the street ; 

 if you are of the philosophic mind you will see 

 that a mob is but one person, and that a spirit. 

 A crowd will seem to you like a stage crowd, 

 trained to its work. Nature and Art are so 

 linked that it is sometimes difficult to know 

 where they merge. Now a garden is all dreams. 

 The men who made this one had the sense 

 of artificiality highly developed. They made 

 grotts where water played strange music, to 

 imitate the chirping of birds or the roaring of 

 wild beasts. They set copper balls dancing 

 above the pavements by virtue of wind conveyed 

 secretly to holes beneath them. They even 

 went so far in their theatres of water as to cause 

 artificial storms to arise in built caves, with a 

 fury of wind and rain and thunder such as the 

 one the Cardinal Aldobrandini had at his villa. 

 Men who try to harness the elements for their 

 pleasure are all dreamers. Just so the man who 

 plucks a rose, for he who plucks a rose plucks 

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