Flowers and Gardens 



can be placed upon the weather and its 

 humours, the sunshine ever rapidly alter- 

 nating with the shower. 



This compactness gives us a kind of 

 beauty which we almost regret to lose. 

 In the spring garden, for instance, when 

 it chances to be well managed, what an 

 exquisite neatness in the plants, a neat- 

 ness which has no intrusive formality to 

 vex us — those close little tufts of Snow- 

 drop, Crocus, Aconite, or perhaps of the 

 later flowers like Dog's-Tooth Violet and 

 Anemone, springing up amidst shrubs 

 and bushes all sparkling with leaf-buds, 

 amongst ground leaves of such beauty 

 that we almost regret to think that those 

 Lupins, with their radiating star crystals, 

 or those bright young shoots of Monks- 

 hood, will presently start up and riot in 

 the wild luxuriance of summer ! It is 

 the same if we go into the open country, 

 though there we find the withered wrecks 

 of the past year, which the hand of art 

 has removed from our gardens. It is 

 singular how little careful Nature shows 

 herself in some instances to make her 

 work what we should consider as perfect. 

 It is not only that she scorns a formal 

 neatness, for every great human artist 

 will do that, but that actually, as a part 



194 



