S6 

 453 



A Poeft Laureate's AC&TO 



T IS neither wise, nor tender, 

 nor loving, to remit to others, 

 however expert, the supreme 

 care of one's garden. You will 

 tend yours with your own 

 hands, and discover its needs 

 with your own heart, and if, in 

 doing so, you have to withdraw 

 yourselves sometimes, more than accords 

 with modern wont, into rural seclusion, your 

 social instincts will not thereby be starved, 

 nor your share in the graces and charities 

 of life thereby be curtailed. You will find 

 much resemblance between flowers and hu- 

 man beings, for they too grow reserved un- 

 der coldness or mal-treatment, and respond 

 with almost feminine alacrity to every sym- 

 pathetic endeavor to apprehend them." 

 Alfred Austin. 



