176 WOOD AND GARDEN 



greatly to their bettering ? The conditions of the life 

 of a parish priest would tend to make him a good 

 gardener, for, while other men roam about, he stays 

 mostly at home, and to live with one's garden is one 

 of the best ways to ensure its welfare. And then, 

 among the many anxieties and vexations and dis- 

 appointments that must needs grieve the heart of 

 the pastor of his people, his garden, with its whole- 

 some labour and all its lessons of patience and trust 

 and hopefulness, and its comforting power of solace, 

 must be one of the best of medicines for the healing 

 of his often sorrowing soul. 



I do not envy the owners of very large gardens. 

 The garden should fit its master or his tastes just 

 as his clothes do ; it should be neither too large nor 

 too small, but just comfortable. If the garden is 

 larger than he can individually govern and plan and 

 look after, then he is no longer its master but its slave,, 

 just as surely as the much-too-rich man is the slave 

 and not the master of his superfluous wealth. And 

 when I hear of the great place with a kitchen garden 

 of twenty acres within the walls, my heart sinks as I 

 think of the uncomfortable disproportion between the 

 man and those immediately around him, and his vast 

 output of edible vegetation, and I fall to wondering 

 how much of it goes as it should go, or whether the 

 greater part of it does not go dribbling away, leaking 

 into unholy back-channels; and of how the looking 

 after it must needs be subdivided ; and of how many 



