A Town restricted area, have so far been explored! Leaving aside the 
Garden strictly official ones, which are congregated for the most 
part within the Phoenix Park—places presided over by mere 
birds of passage, “‘ well-meaning officials,” darkly ignorant as 
a rule, good souls, of that unaccountable world which they have 
come to govern, including as likely as not the contents of their 
own flower-beds—leaving these entirely aside, the conscientious 
observer next comes to a halt in the very middle of the town 
of Dublin itself. 
Town gardens—as all who have studied the subject are 
aware—form a separate and well-recognised genus, and as such 
are habitually prescribed for by their own specialists. Here,' 
save by the inevitable limitations of space, such a specialist 
would be puzzled to recognise one of his,or her patients in 
the gay tide, not of temporary, but of permanent greenery and 
floweriness, which spreads and flourishes upon every side. It is a 
garden which by sheer force of circumstances has grown up 
in separate sections, each section being divided from its 
neighbour by a wall of demarcation. Over these walls the 
hand of knowledge has been especially laid. Walking 
beside them, or dipping under an arch into the next 
compartment, the notion of being in an ordinary town 
garden slips wholly away from your mind, and is replaced by 
the image of some sort of academic cloister, a cloister made gay 
with the Pinks, Irises, Saxifrages, Wall-flowers, Snapdragons 
which crowd its top, or look down at you out of every niche 
in its sides, cunningly concealed water-pipes ministering here 
and there to their requirements, the tongue-like faces of the 
last-named flowers suggesting to the eye of fancy gargoyles, 
1 The garden of Alexandra College. 
22 
