GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 
practically used, and portions of the apparatus are, I believe, still 
to be seen at South Kensington. 
Ronalds offered the invention to the Admiralty of the day, 
but my Lords rejected it on the ground that as the war with France 
was just concluded, they had no use for it—curious reading in our 
eyes at the present time. 
How long Ronalds resided at Hammersmith I do not know ; but 
he died in 1878, at the advanced age of eighty-five. After him 
came Dr. George Macdonald. The son of a Scottish farmer, he was 
the direct descendant of one of the families who suffered in the 
famous massacre of Glencoe—a fact which may have helped to 
colour his mind with romance, and to tinge it with religious fervour. 
Anyway, he was a successful portrayer of Scottish peasant life in 
fiction, and a pioneer in a charming by-way of literature, since 
traversed by other men with even greater results. Through the 
medium of his popular novels, and sincere verses (marked as they 
were by strong religious feeling), he made a powerful appeal to a 
large section of the serious reading public. He also wrote delight- 
fully for children, and was for a time editor of Good Words for the 
Young ; and he published a fascinating “‘ faerie romance ”’ called 
‘* Phantastes.”’ 
He had many children, and during his residence at the river-side 
dwelling at Hammersmith, the garden must have been lively with 
their glad voices, so that the name by which he called the house, 
‘‘ The Retreat,’ was rather a misnomer. William Morris changed 
it to ‘‘ Kelmscott House ’’—thus linking it with his beloved country 
home on the Upper Thames, thirty miles from Oxford. The latter 
place he himself describes in 1871 in a letter to his friend Faulkner, 
as ‘‘ a heaven on earth, an old stone Elizabethan house like Water 
Eaton, and such a garden! close down to the river, a boat-house 
and all things handy.” His biographer, Mr. J. W. Mackail, tells 
us that during twenty-five years he found in the beautiful old house, 
a peace and joy that no other place gave him, and his attachment 
to it deepened as years went on, became indeed passionate, because 
‘‘ with him the love of things had all the romance and passion 
that is generally associated with the love of persons only.” It 
became to him as he himself said, in one of his letters, ‘“‘ the type 
of the pleasant places of the earth, and of the homes of harmless, 
simple people, not over-burdened with the intricacies of life; and, 
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