A GARDEN BY THE SEA 23 



The garden of my friend is a " pleasant " garden, and 

 he, too, is a " curious searcher " of beautiful and pleasant 

 plants. That is why his garden seems to be an old- 

 fashioned garden, and not because it is at all like Shak- 

 spere's garden, or Mary Arden's garden, or the hideous 

 Elizabethan gardens pictured in the "Hortus Floridus," 

 published in 1614. His, though not by any means a 

 Tottenham Court Road product, is no Wardour Street 

 garden, but is old-fashioned in the sense that some of 

 Heal's bedsteads are old-fashioned, or that beautiful 

 English prose is old-fashioned as contrasted with the 

 English of the yellow press. 



He would not be without his Snowdrops, and quite 

 as emphatically would he not be without his Crocuses. 

 Great clumps everywhere, among the shrubs, at roots of 

 trees and by the path-sides, radiate light and beauty 

 like so many fairyland flashes. First come the violet 

 cups of Crocus imperati, often before January has 

 passed ; then the brilliant array of yellow Crocus luteus 

 (overwhelming the Snowdrops, by then well past 

 their chief beauty and chief interest), followed by 

 Crocuses of every shade of purple, lavender, and white. 

 These, like the Snowdrops, are left quite undisturbed 

 year after year, and if there be some little falling off in 

 the size of the flowers, which is doubtful, there is more 

 than compensation in the added beauty which the result- 

 ing gradation of colour and natural grouping yield. 

 "When I think of these glories, I can but reflect on how 

 much beauty that academic " Shakspere-garden " goes 

 lacking. Indeed, we shall all do well to steer clear 

 of formulas and rigidity, as well in our lives as in our 

 garden-beds. 



