HISTORY UNDERFOOT 



Very likely the fishponds here were made by 

 monks years and years ago ; under the soft 

 springy turf lie the mosaics of a Roman villa ; 

 the walls in the fruit garden be built of Tudor 

 bricks ; but for all that, when I see the arbours of 

 mulberry trees, the pinks and gillyflowers in the 

 borders, the white fantails strutting on the lawn, 

 I feel myself to be in the times of Addison and 

 Steele. 



" Gardens of palaces," says the king, " remind 

 me of France and Italy, for they were builders of 

 palaces and loved formality of the shapes and 

 paths, and they liked wide open spaces and many 

 steps, and great splashing of many fountains. 

 English gardens have, for all their grand manner, 

 a sense of home. Where the Italian builds with 

 marble the English plant trees. I think the 

 English have the finest sense for wildernesses and 

 for parks, parks with great avenues and clumps of 

 trees, and deer grazing, with meadows beyond, 

 and a river running at the foot of a hill. 



" If Romance be your portion, then the world is 

 a garden and a window box is a garden ; but real 

 Romance is the portion of the few. People as a 

 whole elect to distress themselves about facts that 



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