66 
THE HEART OF A GARDEN 
indeed. They are Cyclopean roses, fragrant, wonderful, 
with much of the lily’s sculptured loveliness added to 
them beside. One parterre that enshrines these, and 
these only, leads a sedate, glossy-foliaged existence of 
serene monotony for a good three-parts of the year, or, 
may-be, a little longer; but in its full flower-time it is 
a miracle, neither more nor less, out-blossoming the 
rose, and making of the magnolia but a pale ghost to 
the memory. Great golden-hearted moons of ivory, 
lustrous globes of rosy-tinted pearl, strong spheres of 
coral and of peach, swing and sway above their fields of 
shining leafage, exhaling an enchanted perfume. Down 
the long drive, and bordering upon the shrubbery, they 
rejoice the June days and the heart of the beholder 
with their frank assurances of fairy-tales fulfilled. 
Not the least beautiful are the single, and the almost 
single, simulating titanic briar roses, which have lost 
not one whit of their native delicacy in the translation; 
while those called double and anemone-flowered offer 
charms of a more opulent, yet by no means less 
exquisite, distinction. It is the magic-fruited orchard 
of Aladdin that one walks in here and now. While, 
again, between smooth sward and marble balustrade, 
upon the southern terrace, flower alabaster chalices, 
touched here and there to gold, above their rich leafage : 
scarce a stone’s throw from the rose-garden itself, 
crowding close around the old stone lanthorn from 
Japan, there spreads a field of nodding blush-rose 
and Persian-pink globes, with scattered notes of apricot 
and coral, that would seem to have borrowed beauty 
from skies of summer dawn. There are flowering 
