248 A WHITE-PAPER GARDEN 



what most ancient Indias and Chinas and 

 Persias and Egypts will they come ! From 

 what Spains, and Low Countries ! What 

 Italys and what Englands ! How will kings 

 be abased before the patient husbandmen who 

 added a new grain to man's store of food ; and 

 how will the greatest soldiers be forgotten in 

 the presence of the unpraised courage of tra- 

 vellers who have brought garden tribute from 

 farthermost isles to our shores ! How will the 

 wealth that ordered vast pleasaunces pale before 

 the love that kept a geranium alive in the base- 

 ment of a city's slum ; or the blended thoughts 

 that sanctify the bit of flower-bed in front of the 

 hut of an Iceland fisherman ! How we shall 

 rejoice to see the old herbalists, whose books 

 are such mines of delight, and how we shall 

 honour the monks and nuns who kept the 

 gentle art alive through warring ages ! 



Now that the nights are long again I begin 

 to feel anew how great is my debt to the writers 

 of the "books on gardening" which are so 

 many that in any well-ordered library they 

 require a department all to themselves. There 

 has never yet been one that was wholly stupid, 

 nor will there be, since how can a book be 



