KINGS IN GARDENS 



do not matter instead of ideas that do matter, 

 People looking at this garden where we have 

 happily met " (I rise and bow) " would, for the 

 most part, see nothing but its exterior beauties. 

 I have known people say of Venice that it is a 

 place of tottering palaces and bad smells. There 

 is a railway up the Jungfrau. There are ad- 

 vertisements in English meadows. But what 

 can one expect of people to whom Romance is 

 nothing ? One can only expect from them 

 accurate material sight and soul-blindness. To 

 us the ghosts of our fancies are more real than 

 the things we can touch. Let us make a pro- 

 cession of kings in gardens : we can do it. There 

 goes Louis the Fourteenth in all his pomp and 

 vanity strutting through the gardens of Versailles ; 

 that garden is his perpetual background. There's 

 Dutch William with his tulips ; Napoleon talking 

 to his gardener. I think of most kings with 

 backgrounds all their own : Charles the Second 

 in the Mall, Henry the Eighth at Windsor, 

 George the Third at Weymouth. History is 

 the most fascinating study, and certainly the 

 worst taught. It ought to be taught so that 

 one could hear the laughter in Whitehall ; and 

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