io GARDENS PAST AND PRESENT 



and secure from all assault of foes, there was a 

 garden. 



The very word garden, which has a close affinity 

 with the Anglo-Saxon " geard," or yard, suggests 

 an enclosure within walls ; and in those earliest 

 days, when Britain had as yet scarce begun to 

 emerge from the thraldom of the dark ages, the 

 arches of the cloister shut in a "garth," a quiet 

 rood of grass, where the inmates of the monastery 

 found a safe and sheltered pacing ground, and, 

 in some cases, a final resting-place for feet that 

 would pace no more. Beyond, again, a plot of 

 ground was set apart for esculent and medicinal 

 herbs whose properties were well understood for 

 the mingling of healing drinks and ointments for 

 the sick, who asked for no better physicians than 

 the monks. There, too, not a few simple flowers 

 found their home. At first there would be merely 

 primroses from the woodland glade, scented violets 

 from the hollow in some steep chalk cliff, meadow- 

 sweet from the brook side, or pink-blossomed rush 

 to grace the reedy bank of the fish pool. These, 

 transplanted from their native haunts by some 

 brother who loved and carefully tended them, soon 

 outshone the wildings left behind in thicket or 

 field. But other flowers than these followed later 

 on blossoms rare and strange, of gorgeous colour- 

 ing and passing fair. Anemones, purple and scar- 

 let, from the land of the Holy Cross, pure white 

 lilies and legendary crown-imperials, painted tulips 

 and scented jacinth, borne over sea and plain in 

 the wallets of wandering pilgrims, and gladly 

 offered in gratitude for hospitality freely bestowed, 



