SUSSEX 105 



and gentry, looks only old-fashioned, its age being as 

 much repressed as if it were a kind of sin or originality. 

 This is that spirit which would quarrel with the stars for 

 not being in straight lines like print, the spirit of one who, 

 having been disturbed while shaving by the sight of a 

 favourite cat in the midst of her lovers and behaving after 

 the manner of iier kind, gives orders during the long 

 mid-day meal that she shall be drowned forthwith, or — 

 no — to-morrow, which is Monday. This is that spirit 

 which says — 



Nature is never stiff, and none recognizes this fact 



better than Sc Son, and their now well-known and 



natural-looking rockeries have reclaimed many a dreary 



bit of landscape. At they showed me photographs 



of various country seats where the natural-looking scenery 

 has been evolved by their artistic taste and ingenuity out 

 of the most ordinary efforts of Nature. Thus a dull old 

 mill-stream has, with the aid of rockeries and appropriate 

 vegetation, been converted into a wonderfully pictur- 

 esque spot, an ordinary brook was transformed into a 

 lovely woodland scene, with ferns, mosses, and lichens 

 growing among the rockeries, and the shores of an 

 uninteresting lake became undulating banks of beauty by 



the same means; while the beautiful rockeries in 



Park were also the work of this firm. & Son have 



other ways, too, of beautifying gardens and grounds by 

 the judicious use of balustrades, fountains, quaint figures, 



etc., made of " terra-cotta," or artificial stone, which 



is far more durable than real stone or marble, not so 

 costly, and impervious to frost and all weathers, although 

 it takes the vegetation in the same way, and after a year's 

 exposure it can scarcely be distinguished from antique 

 stone. In it the great specialite here just now is "sun- 

 dials," the latest craze; for without a sundial no ancient 

 or up-to-date garden is considered complete. 



