ARRANGEMENT 107 



through the glossy evergreens in which the throstle 

 sang. They welcomed their flowers as He sent them 

 who ' hath made everything beautiful in His time ' : 

 they did not upbraid Nature, nor essay to wake her 

 when she slept her winter sleep ; they forgave her 

 deciduous trees. They followed her in all things 

 as their teacher. They copied her lines, which were 

 rarely straight, rarely angular ; and her surfaces, 

 which were rarely flat. Said to me a house-painter, 

 whom I watched and praised as he was cleverly 

 graining one of my doors in imitation of oak, * Well, 

 sir, I must say I do think myself, that Fm following 

 up Natur' close,' and he ran his thumb-nail up a 

 panel swiftly, as though he would catch her by the 

 heel. So did they reproduce her graceful features. 

 * It is the peculiar happiness of the age' (this was 

 written in 1755) *to see just and noble ideas brought 

 into practice, peculiarities banished, prospects opened, 

 the country called in. Nature rescued and improved, 

 and Art decently concealing itself under her own 

 productions.' * I am now,' wrote the Czarina to 

 Voltaire in the year 1772, * wildly in love with the 

 English system of gardening, its waving lines and 

 gentle declivities ; ' and so was all the gardening 

 world. Sixty years later, in my own childhood, 

 there were in the garden, before me as I write, — and 

 now little more than one subdivided flower-bed, — 



