A GARDEN DIARY 5 
and its multifarious contents has lain below my 
feet, as the Pacific was believed by Keats to have 
lain below those of Cortez, and if now and then 
I have been troubled by a passing doubt, a “ wild 
surmise” as to whether all these places really have 
been seen by my own eyes, I have made haste to 
put that misgiving aside, as His Majesty King 
George the Fourth was no doubt in the habit 
of doing, whenever similar misgivings as to the 
heroic part played by himself at the Battle of 
Waterloo crossed the royal mind. 
To have been so far, and to have seen so 
much is good, but to have retained a lowly spirit 
with it all is even better. To be able, with 
Alphonse Karr, to set forth on the five hundred 
and first tour round one’s garden, brimming with 
expectation, and all the certainty of new dis- 
covery. To be as thrilled over the alternations 
between the nut-tree walk in winter, and the 
alpine heights in summer, as ever the family of 
the Vicar were over those between the blue 
parlour and the brown. These are the things 
that really carry a traveller comfortably forward 
in an easy jog-trot towards his predestined bourne. 
And if there happen to be a pair of such tra- 
vellers, a pair of such explorers, and if each of 
them carries his or her own wallet, or knapsack, 
and if those two travellers part often, yet often 
come together again, then what an opening up 
of budgets takes place! What a retailing of 
