A GARDEN DIARY 175 
itself up like a scroll, and they are once again 
in very deed, though but for a little while, as 
they once were. 
There is a spot in a hill-wood barely a mile 
from this door, to which I have been a good 
many times this spring, and which each time I 
go gives me a curiously homely feeling. Ireland 
seems to breathe in it, even West Ireland, though 
I can hardly say why, the only apparent reason 
being the rather unpatriotic one that the fir 
trees, of which the wood consists, have been 
sadly neglected. It covers an unusually steep bit 
of hillside, and below expands into a tangle of 
brakes and brambles, circling about a hollow 
place, which in my mind’s eye I conceive to be 
a boggy pool, though, were I to clamber down 
to it, I should probably find it to be dust-dry. 
Far and near not a roof is within sight, else 
were that illusion for a certainty lost. More- 
over, the only bit of distance visible seems to 
be houseless also, and in these grey, rather 
despondent - looking spring days wears just a 
touch of that wistful indefiniteness, the lack of 
which, one is apt to assert, amongst many beau- 
ties, to be England’s most conspicuous blemish. 
Until the last great summons comes for us, we 
can never, happily, entirely lose what has once 
formed a part of our little mental patrimony. 
We may deliberately discard it, or, what oftener 
happens, it may get unintentionally overlaid with 
