kerb all weather-stained. Unfortunately it has lost its central figure, but 

 it must once have had just such an one as the playful boy in the picture. 

 He would possibly be in the act of blowing water through a shell, or 

 producing it in some other fashion known only to amorini and water- 

 nymphs. Set about the fountain, against the curve of the box hedge, 

 are marble benches on bracketed feet, which possibly belonged to some 

 earlier garden. 



In the middle of each of the four beds stands a magnolia. This 

 appears to be some variety of the more common kind, for it has smaller 

 leaves and a pleasanter colour and outline. Around and under them, 

 and flowering all the better for the partial shade, grew big bushes of tea 

 roses in their lovely pale tints of cream, apricot, and pink ; Viscountess 

 Folkestone, Marie van Houtte, Souvenir d'un Ami, Madame Cochet, 

 and sturdy bushes of the hardy Bourbon, Souvenir de Malmaison. 



There is nothing formally correct about this little garden; the 

 straight paths and box-edges give just the right degree of firm outline 

 that is wanted in a place cultivated by man. The strong wild growth 

 of flowering plants and big bush roses, left to follow their own sweet 

 will, breaks the harder lines without hiding them. 



Beyond the house, and beyond the forecourt, is a similar but rather 

 longer garden. Here are both beds and borders of roses and " Riviera 

 M-^iy" ^ori di neve as the Italians call it, and all among them violets and 

 lily of the valley, and later on snapdragons and sweet-william, valerian 

 and toad-flax, with many another old-fashioned flower. Here and there 

 grow orange- and lemon-trees, sweet-bay, and oleander. At a corner of 

 the higher terrace a Marechal Niel and Gloire de Dijon mingle their 

 blooms around a marble urn. 



At the further end, half hidden among the trees, a garden-house 

 overhangs the terrace-wall, and high above it rise three tall cypress 

 trees. Nearer the house, beneath the wide-spreading branches of a 

 great magnolia, a little square fountain, with its sleepy gold-fish, is made 

 the excuse for more stone seats. 



In the absence of the kindly proprietor, I shared the garden with Brin, 

 a great Russian hound, with a coat not unlike the woolly lamb of our 

 childhood. At first he was a little doubtful as to the stranger within his 



130 



