ONE'S OWN GARDEN 



"The garden that I love," of which Tennyson 

 sings, and the one of which the late poet- 

 laureate wrote with such affection, has each 

 in it the note of personal love because of per- 

 sonal relationship. One is endeared by asso- 

 ciation, the other, by possession as well. One 

 is loved as the garden of the beloved, the other, 

 as the poet's own. 



Mr. Austin voices an ineradicable instinct 

 when he says, "If the whole world were a 

 garden, I should still want to have a particular 

 and exclusive plot as my own." 



Doubtless man's desire to assert himself in 

 mastery over nature explains in part the in- 

 stinct of possession; but it is, perhaps, more 

 his sense of cultivated beauty that demands it. 



Nature herself requires it at his hands, 

 for "Nature left to herself is a reactionist, 

 always slipping back from worse to worse." 

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