12 
THE HEART OF A GARDEN 
to flower so wondrous sweet and fair ? We look before 
and after, and take heart afresh for the journey, perhaps 
even with an impulse to sing upon the way. Of all the 
many great and gracious sayings that “ R. L. S.” has left 
us, there is not one truer to my mind than this (which 
comes, I think, in his “ El Dorado”), that “ to travel 
hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.” 
In the garden every portent points to hopeful travel: 
such roses as are more sensible to cold are safely swaddled 
in russet withered bracken, cut down long since for their 
winter negligees; some pampered favourites have even 
been given little conical peaked head-pieces of straw that 
make them look in the late twilight, when the moon is 
rising, like a witches’ gathering in miniature. The 
rosemary is decked with her small wan florets, and the 
laurustinus spreads its dull waxen umbels in the shrub¬ 
bery above the shallow graves where the dead leaves lie 
buried. Que la terre leur soit legere ! In but a very few 
months’ time primroses will be flowering where they 
fell, arising in due season to play, these also, their little 
part in the immemorial game of life and death. 
The sundial of grey stone stands like a monument and 
pledge of summer upon the sunken lawn between the 
high walls that engirt the rose-garden. The reigning 
season has despoiled it of the greater portion of its grate¬ 
ful task, and here it stays awaiting the sun’s pleasure. 
“ So flys Time away” is the quiet legend it holds up to 
the light, and I do not believe its long-dead maker could 
have hit upon a better one. Only to con it over is to 
invite serenity and the gracious influences of the sun, to 
see all things in so mild and equable a light as leaves no 
