AUGUST 171 



the hill-country of her childhood, and who, in 

 the pleasaunces upreared on vast bases of 

 masonry found a symbol of the land she had left, 

 is most significant. In it lies the germ of all 

 gardening. The water that plunges into the 

 basin of many a fountain, in many a classic 

 land, does not attempt to do more than suggest 

 the wild leap of down-rushing mountain tor- 

 rents. The long channels of pure water led 

 through Spanish pleasure-grounds, lulling the 

 senses by their gentle flowing, wooing the birds 

 by their cool sparkle, and nourishing the life 

 of the oranges and myrtles that lean over 

 them, are no counterfeit of the untamed rivers 

 that carve their way through hills and valleys, 

 but a frank adaptation of their spirit. A foun- 

 tain, upspringing, downfalling, rainbow-tinted, 

 musical, does not exist anywhere in nature, but 

 responds to some human desire, or it had never 

 been possible. Clipped trees and hedges 

 whose growth have been restricted and thwarted 

 until they are like the fantasies of Hamlet's 

 disordered vision : deciduous trees coaxed 

 into unnatural habits of rounded heads or 

 pendulous branchings these are of that art 

 which Goethe calls nature passed through the 



