KINGS IN GARDENS 



they roll back until I feel I have no will, and 

 then a strange thing I hear a sound so clean- 

 cut and so full of association that I rise and 

 throw the East from my shoulders like a cloak 

 discarded. It is the sound of a man whetting a 

 scythe. 



We make a way through the trees, turn by a 

 wall of cactus, and so into a deep cut in a hedge 

 of yew. The king goes first. " England," he says. 



There is a strength about the scene before us 

 that is missing from the other gardens. It has 

 what all other European gardens lack, a feeling 

 that it stands in the open country, that it is 

 Nature enclosed ; and that it is intensely alive. 



The Italian garden teases the eye, the French 

 garden is full of falsities, the Eastern garden of 

 unreality. This, for all its space and orderliness, 

 is a steadfast, watching repose. 



It has, after the others, a great sense of green. 

 It has a quality of velvet to the eye. Green 

 slopes to green and mounts to green again. Oaks 

 full of solemnity and strength ; giant elms and 

 beeches meet the rolling lawns, and the lawns 

 meet long ponds where water-lilies open their 

 cups to the dappled sky. 

 16 



