196 GARDEN-CRAFT. 



hastens from the Alps to the sand-dunes of Scheven- 

 ingen." 



I admit that it is strange that time should hold 

 in reserve such revenges as this ascetic writing 

 denotes strange that man should find beauty 

 irksome, and that he should feel blasted with the 

 very ecstasy himself has built up in a garden ! 

 strange this sudden recoil of the smooth son of 

 culture from the extreme of Art, to the extreme of 

 Nature! Stranger still that the "Yes" and " No " 

 of the Ideal Hyde and the Real Jekyll should consist 

 in the same bosom, and that a man shall be, as it 

 were, a prey to contrary maladies at one and the 

 same time ! Yet we have found this in Bacon 

 prince of fine gardeners, who with all his seeming 

 content with the heroic pleasaunce that he has made, 

 shall still betray a sneaking fondness for the maiden 

 charms of Bohemia outside. Earthly Paradise is fine 

 and fit, but there must needs be " mounts of some 

 pretty height, leaving the wall of the enclosure 

 breast high to look abroad in the fields " there must 

 be " a window open, to fly out at, a secret way to 

 retire by." Nay, after all, what are to him the 

 charms that inspire his rhapsody of words the 

 things that princes add for state and magnificence ! 

 They are Delilah's charms, and " but nothing to the 

 true pleasure of a garden ! " 



" Our gardens in Paris," says Joubert, "smell 

 musty ; I do not like these ever-green trees. There 

 is something of blackness in their greenery, of cold- 

 ness in their shade. Besides, since they neither lose 



