ON THE THEORY OF A GARDEN. 



grade of life is to say it of all sorts and conditions 

 of men ; and to say it of one garden is to say it of 

 all whether the garden be the child of quality or of 

 lowliness ; whether it adorn castle, manor-house, 

 villa, road-side cottage or signalman's box at the 

 railway siding, or Japanese or British tea-garden, or 

 Babylonian terrace or Platonic grove at Athens in 

 each case it was made for eye-delight at Beauty's 

 bidding. Even the Puritan, for all his gloomy creed 

 and bleak undecorated life, is Romanticist here ; 

 the hater of outward show turns rank courtier at a 

 pageant of flowers : he will dare the devil at any 

 moment, but not life without flowers. And so we 

 have him lovingly bending over the plants of his 

 home-garden, packing the seeds to carry with him 

 into exile, as though these could make expatriation 

 tolerable. " There is not a softer trait to be found 

 in the character of these stern men than that they 

 should have been sensible of their flower-roots 

 clinging among the fibres of their rugged hearts, and 

 have felt the necessity of bringing them over sea and 

 making them hereditary in the new land." (Haw- 

 thorne, ''Our Old Home," p. 77.) 



But to take a higher point of view. A garden is, 

 in many ways, the "mute gospel" it has been declared 

 to be. It is the memorial of Paradise lost, the 

 pledge of Paradise regained. It is so much of earth's 

 surface redeemed from the scar of the fall : 



" Who loves a garden still keeps his Eden." 



Its territories stand, so to speak, betwixt heaven 



B 2 



