IT is not every author who feels inspired to write out 

 of doors, under the free, blue sky of heaven. One 

 man complains that his thoughts wander ; they flit as 

 lightly as the white butterfly which he is compelled to 

 watch, as it moves from one great golden gorse-bush to 

 another. The next writer who is questioned says that 

 the rustle of wind in the fir-trees, instead of having a 

 soothing, happy effect, and bringing to mind the gentle 

 ebb of sea waves upon a pebbled beach, fills his soul with 

 melancholy. More general, however, is the complaint 

 that it is difficult to find just the quiet, protected, silent 

 spot where undisturbed flight can be given to fancy. 



Surely, then, every garden should hold many such 

 hedged-in, peaceful retreats, where no sound other than 

 the soft cooing of doves or the faint call of the cuckoo 

 penetrates. Cardinal Newman describes what perhaps 

 every active-minded man would have a garden be : "By 

 a garden is meant mystically a place of spiritual repose, 

 stillness, peace, refreshment, delight." A place, in short, 

 where all the small pettinesses of daily life do not pene- 

 trate, where peace, such as we on earth understand it, 

 can be obtained. 



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