SPANISH GARDENS 



separate entrance, are its lovely gardens laid out 

 by Charles V, an absolute blaze of sunshine and 

 beauty, where between myrtle hedges and terraces 

 lined with brilliant tulips and ranunculuses, foun- 

 tains spring up on either side of the path, and 

 gradually rising higher and higher, unite, and dance 

 together through the flowers. Beyond the more 

 formal gardens are ancient orange groves covered 

 with fruit. The ground is littered with their golden 

 balls. 'There are so many,' the gardener said, 'it 

 is not worth while to pick them up.' We gathered 

 as many as we liked, and felt that no one knew 

 what an orange was who had not tasted the sunny 

 fruit of Seville." 



The gardens of Cadiz, too, are said to be mar- 

 vels of flowery beauty, with geraniums, ixias, helio- 

 tropes. My only intimate personal recollection, 

 however, is of the romantic garden of a convent 

 near Seville. That garden, on a day of April some 

 fifteen years ago, is a bright memory still, with its 

 tree-shaded alleys, its long, narrow walks, radiating 

 from a central circle where tea-roses were in early 



spring bloom. It was Mme. B , a lovely and 



gifted Irishwoman and a preceptress of the con- 

 vent, now my friend and correspondent of years, 

 who through her young pupils learned of a rare 



189 



