THE WHITE ROCKERY 55 



English 'garth.' It means 'a. yard/ It has rather 

 less than nothing to do with wild nature, or any 

 other sort of nature. It is a highly artificial con- 

 trivance within hard and fast boundaries. We speak 

 of a zoological garden, a garden of pleasure, a garden 

 of vegetables. To talk of a ' natural ' or a < wild ' 

 garden, is a contradiction in terms. You might as 

 well talk of a natural 'zoo/ and do away with bars, 

 and arrange bamboo brakes for the tigers, mountain- 

 tops for the eagles, and an iceberg for the polar bears. 

 Pope and Addison began the < natural ' theory, 

 or fell in with it as soon as others set the fashion. 

 They were about as intimate with nature as my 

 chimney-sweep is with the latest Russian fiction ; 

 but it happened to be the cant of the time, and 

 they reflected their hour and preached the return 

 to Nature du sein des boudoirs. Remember that 

 very fine jest against our landscape - gardening : 

 " Rien n'est plus facile que de dessiner un pare 

 anglais ; on n'a qu'a enivrer son jardinier, et a 

 suivre son trace." I scorn a park, or garden 

 either, planned upon that groggy pattern. My 

 paths are straight or circular, as the case requires : 

 there is no meandering with me. You will perhaps 

 answer sharply that one cannot meander in an acre, 

 and that I am like the fox with his tail gone : I 

 pretend to admire what I have no power to evade. 

 Believe me, you are wrong. As I say elsewhere, if 

 my garden were a thousand acres, it should sternly 

 subscribe to form and design. The architect and 

 the gardener, like "the walrus and the carpenter," 



