172 THE HERBACEOUS BOEDER 



sessed a great garden and means to maintain it 'top 

 hole,' so to speak, ho would have aimed at scenic effect 

 by a similar method. I am well assured that he would 

 not, for this very practical reason, that it was his 

 purpose and custom to derive enjoyment from his 

 borders at all seasons, whereas the autumnal display at 

 Castle could only be secured by concentrating 

 effort upon that time of year, and forgoing beauty and 

 interest during all the other months. Howbeit, when 

 all is said, memory records that north-country garden 

 as a very brilliant bit of landscape. 



Many an old garden has been ruined by well-meant 

 attempt to improve it, just as many an old English 

 parish church has been scarified by ' restoration.' I 

 have in mind one such garden which was full of old- 

 world charm when I first visited it many years ago. 

 Midsummer was at its fairest ; the weather was such 

 as my old mathematical tutor at Oxford, Lewis Carroll, 1 

 described in his own inimitable gibberish : 



' 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves 



Did gyre and gimble in the wabe ; 

 All mimsy were the borogoves, 

 And the mome raths outgrabe.' 



It was an old Scottish garden, four-square and spacious, 

 within lofty walls of red freestone. Everything was 

 rectangular ; broad grass paths crossed at right angles 

 in the centre, and the flower-beds were but wide strips 

 of border in front of the kitchen stuff. Not a romantic 

 design, you will say ; a total absence of any attempt at 

 effect ; but age had so dimmed the masonry ; ancient 



1 Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, died in 1898, aged 66. 



