140 MY GARDEN 



the survey of any flora or tropic scene, he bar- 

 gained that these high colours should be diversified, 

 and the object never entirely dominated by one. 

 The peacock's neck, the opal, the rainbow, and the 

 rainbow-flower all answer to this test. 



Let us now approach the great subject of cushion 

 irises. An expert has said that when the oncocyclus 

 group chanced to meet his eye in an English garden, 

 he was reminded of the gladiatorial hail, " Morituri te 

 salutant ! " And indeed these wonderful things would 

 usually seem to anticipate their own extinction and 

 lift the fitful flower or aborted bud of farewell over 

 their own graves. We do not understand them, and 

 only a rare spirit here and there has succeeded in 

 bringing them to perfection and providing the con- 

 ditions they demand. But how great the reward ! 

 Their melancholy stateliness ; their solitary habit ; 

 their size, and the magic of their colouring and forms, 

 lift them above, not only all other irises, but all other 

 flowers that I have ever seen outside a dream. They 

 are to the garden what Chopin is to music. As he 

 was a genius apart who, out of suffering, and an 

 artist's joy that rose above suffering, poured forth 

 magic of harmony and beauty to delight men's ears, 

 and so intoxicated them with glory of sound that they 

 often forgot the quivering nerve-centres of the human 

 miracle who wrought them : so with these most 

 wonderful, beautiful, and sad of flowers, we sometimes 

 miss the spirit in them while overjoyed or overawed 

 by the substance. Without foundering in the pathetic 

 fallacy, I yet have always felt before cushion irises 



