THE EARLY IDEALS 233 



sensitive of things. Indeed I cannot express, without 

 laying myself open to the charge of wild and senti- 

 mental exaggeration, even a small degree of this su- 

 perlative garden "feeling." 



And moreover, a garden will not be deceived, neither 

 will it lie! Coax, elude and delude ourselves as we 

 may, the naked truth will out there, in the end, to con- 

 fuse us. No assumed attitude ever tricks it or catches 

 it unawares; but rather will it fool us, and lay bare 

 our little mummeries when we are least prepared. 

 So beware of ever undertaking anything in the garden 

 without an honest intention. It will never succeed. 

 But be assured that with an honest intention, many 

 imperfections in knowledge and even in taste, will be 

 indulgently passed over and somehow mysteriously 

 adjusted by the strange little garden folk that dwell 

 out under the skies, some ever looking up at them in 

 bright comprehension, others with tender faces turned 

 down to the good earth. 



To be honest in making an old-fashioned garden 

 then, and so to be successful, we must literally become 

 "old-fashioned" — in our garden thinking at least. 

 We must retrace two hundred or a hundred and fifty 

 years or so, and put ourselves back there as definitely 

 and actually as it is possible to do. We must find 

 out, in this way, what the old thoughts about the gar- 

 den were, what the old ideals, the old conceptions. 



