THE SMALL SUBURBAN GARDEN 63 



a stunted cabbage or two, other with a rabbit-hutch or a 

 handful of dilapidated fowls, another with clothes hanging 

 out to dry. Sometimes there will be a summer-house, 

 but very seldom anybody sitting in it, nor does one often 

 catch sight of children playing happily about ; they 

 prefer the more exciting street or the playground of their 

 school. 



But travelling by road, what do we see ? Whether we 

 steam along the great high-road to Acton and Ealing, or 

 towards the hills of Highgate and Hampstead, or rattle 

 through Richmond to Wimbledon, or via Kingston's 

 quaint old town to Surbiton and its precincts, it is always 

 the same ; hundreds and thousands of villas and small 

 houses are met with, each of which is a castle to some 

 Englishman. Interspersed with them are large gardens 

 of older houses ; but these, as a rule, are hidden from view 

 by high walls and trees. They have a different story, 

 are sometimes of great beauty, and do not belong at all 

 to the class we are now considering. 



Before every one of the small suburban houses, certainly 

 before all that are detached, there is a little plot of ground 

 with trees and shrubs. These plots are typically suburban, 

 and are often very severely censured by careless critics 

 for their monotony and gracelessness. Unjustly so, I 

 think ; it appears to me that, in most cases, pains have 

 been taken to make the most of opportunities, and con- 

 sidering that in a whole row of small gardens every one 

 has a different owner, and a different mind behind it, it is 

 wonderful things are not more patchy than they are. 



Let us look at some of these suburban highways on a 

 smiling day of very early summer ; it is a cheerful pros- 

 pect. There will be flowering and foliage trees, neat 

 gravel paths, and carefully kept shrubs. Lilacs, Syringas 

 (properly called Mock-orange), Laburnums dropping fires, 

 Rowan-trees that by-and-by will be brilliant with berries, 

 bronze-brown Copper-beech trees. Guelder-roses tossing 



