such as in the more ancient cloisters grimace and gibber at us 
from every coign and angle of the masonry ! 
Few things in this rather incongruous world are perhaps 
odder than the fashion in which pursuits—often not in the 
least important in themselves—grow important by mere dint 
of exercise, so that what at first seem even to their doers 
trivial efforts, come to wear after a time quite a serious and 
responsible aspect. So I find it on this occasion, and—not 
myself possessing upon this coast, I may observe, as much garden 
ground as would furnish a decent lark’s cage—a sort of: ghost 
or simulacrum of ownership, the phantom of the real thing, 
seems to have evolved itself in the course of these saunterings, so 
that now I find myself glancing instinctively around me, criticis- 
ing this garden, rearranging that one, disposing of the other, 
with all the matter-of-course dignity suitable to an actual 
owner. Gladly—still in this same owner-like spirit !—would I 
pursue our investigations into the county Wicklow, where 
even more fascinating gardens await us. Unfortunately the 
impulse is one that must summarily be repressed, no less than 
another carrying me inland, towards what may be called the 
extra-Dublin-Bay area, where one garden especially beckons 
alluringly—a garden behind whose iron gates are to be seen vistas 
of seemingly endless flower borders, as it were gardens within 
gardens, converging towards an ancient stone tank which 
stands half hidden in alpine plants, and overhung with climbing 
Roses and all manner of other ramblers.! Such allurements, 
however, must at all costs be resisted, else would the space 
allotted in this book to Irish gardens overflow the whole, as 
I have known happen before now to flower-gardens of my 
1 Bushy Park. 
23 
Phantom 
Ownership 
