GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 
and the walk on the opposite side, which may once have been yellow 
gravel, is now an ambiguous, purply-grey of nondescript composi- 
tion. It would be well if “‘ the Trust’ could stand the expense of a 
few gay flowers to enliven a spot that fifty or sixty years ago must 
have been bright and pretty enough. For here Carlyle sat and 
dreamed in the early summer dawn, and worked beneath his awning 
in the July “ blazes.” Here “‘ Jeannie” directed her maids, or 
weeded or watered, while Nero frisked about her, the happiest of 
little dogs. It is, or should be, hallowed ground ; how many great 
thoughts germinated here, we shall never know. Although Carlyle 
professed to dislike art—the art of the days of Maclise and Creswick— 
for he knew nothing of his great contemporary and neighbour, 
Turner, who breathed his last a stone’s throw from No. 5—nor of 
Millais, in Millais’ greatest days—and though a tour in search of the 
picturesque had no charms for him, he was yet unusually sensitive 
to the appeal of nature in all her moods. That this was so, is 
obvious to any reader of the ‘‘ Journal,” and particularly of the 
earlier letters, written from Scotland; but it was the blossoming 
tree in his London garden that inspired the words written in April, 
1851. ‘* Birth of a cherry in the spring of the year, birth of a 
planet in the spring of the eons. The All producing them alike, 
builds them together out of its floating atoms, out of its infinite 
opulence. The germ of an idea lies behind that.” 
Little Nero is buried at the end of the garden, immediately behind 
the point from which I took my drawing. It was the month of 
the outbreak of War in 1914 that I began it, and troops of lively. 
Americans—as yet unable to secure a passage back to their country 
—came, drawn by legitimate interest, to visit the house and garden, 
and to look at the little stone raised by Mrs. Carlyle’s loving hands. 
‘* Ah, poor little Nero’s grave!’ exclaimed one and all—then, 
finding the ground occupied by a lady and a camp-seat, they stared 
at me instead ; and all but the bravest beat a hasty retreat. 
‘“* Tell Sir George,” wrote Mrs. Carlyle, in a very wet summer, 
under date August 20th, 1860—‘‘ I planted the cowslips with my 
own hand, and have not needed to water them; the heavenly 
watering-can . . . having saved me the trouble. I gave them the 
place of highest honour (round poor little Nero’s stone).”’ 
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