ITALIAN GARDEN-MAGIC 
This is the secret to be learned from the villas of 
Italy ; and no one who has looked at them with this 
object in view will be content to relapse into vague ad- 
miration of their loveliness. As Browning, in passing 
Cape St. Vincent and Trafalgar Bay, cried out: 
“ Here and here did England help me: how can I help 
England ? ” — say, 
so the garden-lover, who longs to transfer something 
of the old garden-magic to his own patch of ground at 
home, will ask himself, in wandering under the umbrella- 
pines of the Villa Borghese, or through the box-par- 
terres of the Villa Lante : What can I bring away from 
here ? And the more he studies and compares, the 
more inevitably will the answer be: “Not this or that 
amputated statue, or broken bas-relief, or fragmentary 
effect of any sort, but a sense of the informing spirit — 
an understanding of the gardener’s purpose, and of the 
uses to which he meant his garden to be put." 
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