282 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS 



which Laud, in all the pardonable pride of collegiate lionizing, 

 conducted his illustrious guests, Charles and Henrietta? Who 

 does not grieve that we must now inquire in vain for the bowling- 

 green in Christ Church, where Cranmer solaced the weariness of 

 his last confinement ? And who lately, in reading Scott's life, but 

 must have mourned in sympathy with the poet over the destruction 

 of ' the huge hill of leaves,' and the yew and hornbeam hedges of 

 the ' Garden ' at Kelso. . . . 



My garden should lie to the south of the house ; the ground 

 gradually sloping for some short way till it falls abruptly into the 

 dark and tangled shrubberies that all but hide the winding brook 

 below. A broad terrace, half as wide, at least, as the house is 

 high, should run along the whole southern length of the building, 

 extending to the western side also, whence, over the distant 

 country, I may catch the last red light of the setting sun. I 

 must have some musk and noisette roses, and jasmine, to run 

 up the mullions of my oriel window, and honeysuckles and 

 clematis, the white, the purple, and the blue, to cluster round 

 the top. The upper terrace should be strictly architectural, and 

 no plants are to be harboured there, save such as twine among 

 the balustrades, or fix themselves in the mouldering crevices of 

 the stone. I can endure no plants in pots, a plant in a pot is 

 like a bird in a cage. The gourd alone throws out its vigorous 

 tendrils, and displays its green and golden fruit from the vases 

 that surmount the broad flight of stone steps that lead to the 

 lower terrace; while a vase of larger dimensions and bolder 

 sculpture at the western corner is backed by the heads of a mass 

 of crimson, rose, and straw-coloured hollyhocks that spring up 

 from the bank below. The lower terrace is twice the width of 

 the one above, of the most velvety turf, laid out in an elaborate 

 pattern of the Italian style. Here are collected the choicest 

 flowers of the garden ; the Dalmatic purple of the gentianella, the 

 dazzling scarlet of the verbena, the fulgent lobelia, the bright 

 yellows and rich browns of the calceolaria here luxuriate in their 

 trimly cut parterres, and with colours as brilliant as the mosaic of 

 an old cathedral painted window 



