70 A WHITE-PAPER GARDEN 



chanting of many voices in a glad Te Deum. 

 You will remember it as I remember an April 

 symphony which I saw long ago, and far away, 

 and for an hour only. A long oval bed was 

 bordered by that hardy, white -wooled cine- 

 raria whose leaves start forth as soon as the 

 snows are gone. Inside this border a second 

 border, evidently the growth of many years, 

 since it was so very dense, bore hundreds of 

 clusters of yellow primroses schlusselb lumen, 

 St Peter's keys and then a central space filled 

 with brown wallflowers, which were orange in 

 some lights, and black in some shadows, and 

 velvet everywhere. Beyond this stretched the 

 April-grey valley, and the blue mountains which 

 lost themselves in the ineffable beauty of an 

 April sky. 



I have said April-grey since I dared not use 

 the word green to describe that faint, undefined 

 change which comes over the world which has 

 just left March behind it. There are yellows 

 in this grey, and there are blues, so there must 

 be greens also ; but so faint are they, so 

 ethereal, that they seem to be but that allur- 

 ing mist which hides the future, or that gracious 

 haze which blots out the past. If the outlook 



