HISTORICAL EPILOGUE 317 



dissatisfied with the opinions of Bishop Huet and others on the 

 ' Situation of Paradise/ has succeeded in his attempt to identify 

 its precise position at the heads of the four great rivers of Africa, 1 

 we must be satisfied with Milton's imaginative description in 

 ' Paradise Lost.' 



Possibly it may eventually be proved that Eden is identical with 

 the 'Gardens of the Hesperides' near Mount Atlas; although 

 these gardens, again, stripped of poetic fruit and foliage, have 

 been declared to be only disused stone quarries at Berenice 

 (Bengaze) affording fine soil and shelter for luxuriant fruit-trees. 2 



Milton, it is interesting to note, has so carefully ' trimmed ' and 

 ' hedged ' his garden, as to have been claimed in turns by the 

 partisans of either school as representing its views. 



A set of quotations is necessary to enable the reader to judge 

 whether Horace Walpole is right in seeing only Nature therein, 

 or Walter Bagehot in asserting you could draw a map of it. 



Of Eden, where delicious Paradise, 

 Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green 

 As with a rural mound, the champain head 

 Of a steep wilderness ; whose hairy sides 

 With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild, 

 Access denied ; and overhead up-grew 

 Insuperable height of loftiest shade, 

 Cedar and pine and fir, and branching palm, 

 A sylvan scene ! and, as the ranks ascend 

 Shade above shade, a woody theatre 

 Of stateliest view. Yet higher than their tops 

 The verdurous wall of Paradise up-sprung : 

 ... In this pleasant soil 

 His far more pleasant garden God ordained. 



Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice art 

 In beds and- curious knots, but Nature boon 

 Pour'd forth profuse on hill and dale and plain. 



1 See Mr W. Marshall Adams's letter to The Times on The New Search 

 for Eden.' November 23, 1898. 



2 Lieut. Beechey's Travels in Cyrene, 1828, and Gardener's Magazine, vol. 

 iv. p. 398 (LOudon). 



