276 HOME AND GARDEN 



many to whom, from want of a certain class of refine- 

 ment of education or natural gift of teachable aptitude, 

 are unable to understand or appreciate, at anything 

 like its full value, a good garden picture, and to these 

 no doubt a quantity of individual plants give a greater 

 degree of pleasure than such as they could derive from 

 the contemplation of any beautiful arrangement of a 

 lesser number. When I see this in ordinary gardens, 

 I try to put myself into the same mental attitude, and 

 so far succeed, in that I can perceive that it represents 

 one of the earlier stages in the love of a garden, and 

 that one must not quarrel with it, because a garden is 

 for its owner's pleasure, and whatever the degree or 

 form of that pleasure, if only it be sincere, it is right 

 and reasonable, and adds to human happiness in one 

 of the purest and best of ways. And often I find I 

 have to put upon myself this kind of drag, because 

 when one has passed through the more elementary 

 stages which deal with isolated details, and has come 

 to a point when one feels some slight power of what 

 perhaps may be called generalship; when the means 

 and material that go to the making of a garden seem 

 to be within one's grasp and awaiting one's command, 

 then comes the danger of being inclined to lay down 

 the law, and of advocating the ultimate effects that 

 one feels oneself to be most desirable in an intolerant 

 spirit of cock-sure pontification. So I try, when I am 

 in a garden of the ordinary kind Avhere the owner 

 likes variety, to see it a little from the same point of 



