18 BOOK OF THE SCENTED GARDEN 
real work, the observation, and the golden thoughts 
were from the heath and meadow, the sea, or the 
mountain-sides—born of the sunshine or the storm, 
ripened as it were in the pure fresh air. We have only 
to read works like those of Shakespeare, or to look at 
Turner’s original water-colours in the National Gallery, 
to see the force and beauty of open-air work, as compared 
with that of the library or the studio indoors. 
A book written indoors smells of the oil of midnight, 
and the phrase ‘‘a studio picture” very often means 
pretty much the same thing. 
Cowper was not quite a Wordsworth, Longfellow, or 
a Tennyson, still we are told that his ‘‘idyllic sketches 
of indoor and outdoor life were conjured up in a summer- 
house not bigger than a sedan-chair, standing in a garden 
rich with Roses, Honeysuckle, Pinks and other sweet- 
smelling, old-fashioned flowers.” 
The fact is that the garden is nearer to nature than 
anywhere indoors, no matter how large and glorious a 
house may be; and if the garden gives us privacy and 
repose, ‘‘things pleasant to the eye and good for food,” so 
much the better. We all must know many people who 
naturally grow more genial and expressive in their 
gardens than elsewhere. 
Sadi said long ago, ‘‘ The Rose garden is no place for 
grief,” and the same ought to be true of the sweet-scented 
garden, especially if there is a light and cosy studio in it, 
a place for labour and comfort, rather than a place 
for ostentation and mere show. I can recall many 
happy hours spent in such places sacred to books and 
pictures and to flowers. Such places are to be found 
from Land’s End to Orkney, and wherever seclusion is 
essential to study and work there is nothing so satis- 
factory as ‘“‘a small house in a large garden.” 
Besides all this there is always tugging at our heart- 
strings the Adamite craving to be out of doors during 
