ON THE THEORY OF A GARDEN. 



God-reminder to the saint ; its green recesses have 

 served for Enoch's walk,* for poet's retreat ; as 

 refuge for the hapless victim of broken endeavour ; 

 as enisled shelter for the tobacco-loving sailor-uncle 

 with a wrecked fame ; as invalid's Elysium ; as 

 haunt of the loafing, jesting, unambitioned man 

 (" Alas, poor Yorick!"); as Death's sweet ante-room 

 for slow-footed age. 



What wonder that Sir William Temple devised 

 that his heart should rest where its memories 

 were so deep-intrenched in his garden ; or that 

 Waterton should ask to be buried between the 

 two great oaks at the end of the lake ! (Norman 

 Moore's Introduction to " Wanderings in South 

 America.") 



And if human affections be, as the poets declare, 

 immortal, we have the reason why an old garden, 

 in the only sense in which it ever is old, by the 

 almanack, has that whisper and waving of secrecy, 

 that air of watchful intentness, that far-reaching, 

 mythological, unearthly look, that effect of being a 

 kind of twilighted space common to the two worlds 

 of past and present. Who will not agree with me 

 in this ? It matters not when you go there at 

 dawn, at noonday, no less than when the sky is 

 murky and night-winds are sighing and although 

 you shall be the only visible human being present, it 

 is not alone that you feel. A thrill comes over you, 

 a mysterious sense warns you that this is none other 



* " There is no garden well contrived, but 'that which hath an 

 Enoch's walk in it." SIR W. WALLER. 



