HOLLAND HOUSE AND GARDENS 



time the panorama of radiant splendour that stretched before my 

 dazzled and delighted eyes. I can just recall that all colour was 

 eliminated, and there was nothing left but light. The town, with 

 its covered bridges, was behind me ; the twin towers and pointed 

 spires of the cathedral to the left ; but all this I found out later 

 I observed no details, and of anything that was going on down below 

 in the foreground, I took no heed all that I carried away with me, 

 all that remains in my memory to this day, was the broad impres- 

 sion of a world of glittering, dancing, silvery light, sparkling water, 

 and gleaming snowy peaks. Of course no feeble words of mine 

 could paint it, then or now, but and herein lies my point 

 neither could Sir Walter Scott's. It was the record of a poet-painter's 

 impression that was wanted. But no impressionist below the rank 

 of Turner could have touched it ; and better, far better, a feeble 

 effort in words, that we have all been taught to lisp, and that, how- 

 ever halting, are not without suggestiveness to one who has passed 

 through similar experiences than the amateur artist's daring 

 attempt to paint the unpaintable to rush in to clamber Alps, 

 where we find the pebbles difficult ! 



I cannot paint Alps ; no, nor sketch them but I think I can 

 paint gardens and possibly what my brush fails to explain, my 

 pen may help to elucidate. And just as it is the painter's supreme 

 joy to seize the passing impression and paint it with such force and 

 truth as is in him so it is also his solemn duty and his high voca- 

 tion. Every artist recognizes this, and knows the vital and insistent 

 call for self-expression at every hour, at every moment ; and if 

 life were not so short, and its many uncongenial tasks so long, 

 there would be more evidence of this fact in the world around us. 



And since, as I said before, many things that cannot be described 

 in words are of the very essence of the loveliness of gardens, particu- 

 larly of large gardens, how can bare words, and one drawing only, 

 convey the dignity and charm of the grounds of Holland House ? 

 Of the long, straight rose-walk in the north garden before referred 

 to grassy, not gravelled, and bordered on either side by roses that 

 are all pink though when I beheld it in August, its beauty had 

 somewhat departed ; of the pleasing effect, in the Japanese Garden, 

 of the miniature ponds and pools, fringed, and filled with all manner 

 of foreign aquatic plants rising, as it were in low steps, to the higher 

 ground ; and of the interest of the curious exotic shrubs to be 



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