ALFRED AUSTIN 301 



bed i read the history of the year. Here were the first snow- 

 drops; here came the crocuses, the daffodils, the blue gentians, 

 the columbines, the great globed peonies ; and, last, the lilies and 

 the roses. Country Pleasures. (The Chronicle of a Year, chiefly in 

 a Garden?) 



A GARDEN that one makes oneself becomes associated with ALFRED 

 one's personal history and that of one's friends, interwoven 

 with one's tastes, preferences and character, and constitutes a 

 sort of unwritten but withal manifest, autobiography. Show 

 me your garden, provided it be your own, and I will tell you 

 what you are like. It is in middle life that the finishing touches 

 should be put to it ; and then, after that, it should remain 

 more or less in the same condition, like oneself, growing more 

 deep of shade, and more protected from the winds. . . . 



'Tell me, will you, what governed you in the laying out of 

 the Garden that you Love ? ' 



' What governed me was what I found here : the house, its 

 time-consecrated architecture, its immovable boundaries, the 

 old oak, and not it only, but all the ineradicable old timber 

 within sight, the park, and finally, when all these were allowed 

 for, the general fitness of things. I am quite of opinion that 

 a garden should look as though it belonged to the house, 

 and the house as though it were conscious of and approved 

 the garden. In passing from one to the other, one should 

 experience no sense of discord, but the sensations produced by 

 the one should be continued, with a delicate difference, by 

 the other. Terraces and balustrades, box edgings, or yew 

 hedges, anything obviously and intentionally formal, which 

 is imperative in the case of certain stately dwelling-houses, 

 would surely have been out of place here. Near to the house, 

 the garden, you will have observed, is more formal and shapely, 

 and you never, I trust, altogether lose vague evidences of 

 design. But absolutely symmetrical it is not, though a care- 

 less observer might imagine it to be so, and it gradually assumes 



