Garden-Craft Old and New

come hither,

shall

e

and rough

s out of his grasp and dictates its own method of treatment and style. The subject of gardening answers to this description: you cannot treat it

efully parcelled out and enclosed, as all proper gardens are, the theme may appear so compact, that all meandering after side-issues may seem sheer wantonness. As you proceed, however, it becomes apparent that you may not treat of a garden and disregard the instincts it prompts, the connection it has with Nature, its place in Art, its office in the worl

down three questions just to try what the yoke of classification may do to keep one's feet within bounds: (1) What is a garden, and w

s to say it of all-whether the garden be the child of quality or of lowliness; whether it adorn castle, manor-house, villa, road-side cottage or signalman's box at the railway siding, or Japanese or British tea-garden, or Babylonian terrace or Platonic grove at Athens-in each case it was made for eye-delight at Beauty's bidding. Even the Puritan, for all his gloomy creed and bleak undecorated life, is Romanticist here; the hater of outward show turns rank courtier at a pageant of flowers: he will dare the devil at any mome

t has been declared to be. It is the memorial of Paradise lost, the pledge of Para

arden still ke

f earth, yet no less hints the joys of heaven. It tells of man's happy tillage of his plot of ground, yet blazes abroad the inf

, a paradox that mocks while it comforts. For a garden is ever perplexing us with the "riddle of the painful earth," ever challenging our faith with its counter-proof, ever thrusting before our eyes the abortive effort, the inequality of lot (two roses on a single stem,

arden's message, "the best is yet to be," that smothers the self-pitying whine in poor David Gray's Elegy[7] and braces his spirit with the tonic of a wholesome pride. To the human flower that is born to blush unseen, or born, perchance, not to bloom at all, but only to feel the quickening thrill of April-passion-the fi

e is life

ngdom of a

ery flower

ide we have Nature's "unpremeditated art" surpassed upon its own lines-Nature's tardy efforts and common elementary traits pushed to a masterpiece. On the other side is the callow craft of Adam's "'prentice han

e nonce. Outside the garden precincts-in the furrowed field, in the forest, the quarry, the mine, out upon the broad sea

rows but interc

nd of idyllic intimacy, as is witnessed in their exchange of grace for

nclusions, by man's skill in selection and artistic concentration. True, that the contents of the place have their originals somewhere in the wild-in forest or coppice, or meadow, or hedgerow, swamp, jungle, Alp, or plain hillside. We can run each thing to earth any day, only that a change has passed over them; what in its original state was complex or general, is here made a chosen particular; what was monotonous out there, is here mixed and contrasted; what wa

r in a spirit of rivalry, but for the attainment of a common end. We cannot dissociate them in the garden. A garden is man's transcript of the woodland world: it is common vegetation ennobled: outdoor

prima

treams, that br

ge made fluent and intelligible-Nature's garrulous prose tersely

e Fancy's guest a moment. Turn in from the du

n the busy wo

oms the garden

lleys with their giddy cunning, their gentle gloom, their cross-lights and dappled shadows of waving boughs, make paths of fantasy-where the water in the lake quivers to the wind's soft footprints, or sparkles where the swallows dip, or springs in jets out of shapely fountain, or, oozing from bronze dolphin's mouth, slides down among moss-flecked stones into a deep dark pool, an

ing for the ideal grown to a fine lunacy. It is piquant wonderment; culminated beauty, that for all its combination of telling and select items, can still contrive to look natural, debonair, native to its place. A garden is Nature aglow

beautiful things merely for the sake of something to do, but, rather, because their souls compel them. Any beautiful work of art is a feat, an essay, of human soul.

g intervals of turf and look of expansiveness, it serves to conceal villadom and the hulking paper-factory beyond; that rock-garden with its developed geological formation, dotted over with choice Alpine plants, that the stranger comes to see. It is nothing but the quarry from whence the stone was dug that built the house. Those b

or you by the curiosity, the aspiration, the patient roaming and ceaseless research of a long list of old naturalists; the design of your garden, its picturesque divisions and beds, a result of the social sense, the faculty for refined enjoyment, the constructive genius of the picked minds of the civilised world in all ages. The methods of planting approved of to-day, carrying us back to the admirably-dressed grounds of the ancient castles and ab

] But everywhere, and in all ages of the civilised world, man spares no pains to acquire the choicest specimens, the rarest plants, and to give to each thing so acquired the ideally best expressi

he spirit of calculation. A garden is a kind of investment. The labour and forethought man expends upon it must bring adequat

its

ole d

rved so long an apprenticeship to Nature on her freehold estate, the garden would not so directly appeal to our imaginations and command our spirits. A garden reveals man as master of Nature's lore; he has caught her accents, rifled her motives; he has transferred her bright moods about his own dwelling, has trick

that the interest of man's investment of money and toil is not all for himself. What he captures of Nature's revenues he repays with usury, in coin that bears the mint-mark of inspired invention. This artistic handling of natural

ittle high-flown, and may confer an autobiographical value to an artist's performances that would astonish none more th

hat ocean wh

its own rese

tes, transc

worlds and

ing all t

hought in a

can our faculties find a happier medium of expression or a pleasanter field for display than the garden affords? Nay, to have the ideas, the faculties, and the cha

er's conception. It is no mere hint of beauty-no mere tickling of the fancy-that we get here, such as all other arts (except music) are apt to give you. Here, on the contrary, we are led straight into a world of actual delights patent to all men, which our eyes can see, and our hands handle. More

tisfaction in the very expression of his ideas-"the joy of the deed"-in the sense o

s for the future of the place. The very success of the garden reflects upon its master, and advertises the perfect understanding that exists between the artist and his materials. The sense of ownership and responsibility brings him satisfaction, of a cheaper sort. His the hand that holds the wand to the garden's magic; his the initiating thought, the stamp of taste, the style that give

tra, butterfly's banquet. Verse and romance have done well, then, to link it with pretty thoughts and soft musings, with summer reveries and moonlight ecstasies, with love's occasion, and youth's yearning. No fitter place could well be found than this for the softer transactions of life that awaken love, poesy, and passion. Indeed, were its winsomenes

lights in what is beautiful in form and colour. Its queenly graciousness of mien inspires the reluctant loyalty of even the stoniest mind. Here, if anywhere, will the human hedgehog unroll himself and deign to be companionable. Here friend Smith, caught by its na

l and too much with him. A well-kept garden makes credible to modern eyes the antique fable of an unspoiled world-a world where gaiety knows no eclipse, and winter and rough weather are held at bay. In this secluded spot the seasons slip by unawares. The year's passing-bell is ignored. Decay is cheated of its prize. The invading loss of cold, or wind, or rain-the litter of battered Nature-the "petals from blown roses on the grass"-the pathos of dead boughs and mouldering leaves, the b

for to to

hich neweth

I can, so

n prose by Mr Robinson ("English Flower-Garden," Murray), it is "to make each place at various

rily his attitude towards all that concerns the memories of man is that of a jealous churl. Look at history. What is history but one long record of men who, in this sphere or that, have toiled, striven, sold their souls even, to perpetuate a name and have their deeds wr

rage shall beau

s no stronger

and commits their storied masonry to the mercies of the modern Philistine, will make exception in a garden. "Time's pencil" helps a garden. In a garden not only are the solemn shapes and pass

e have here the very setting of old life-the dressed stage of old drama, the scenery of old gallantry. Upon this terrace, in front of these flower-beds with these trees looking on, was fought out the old battle of right and wrong-here was enacted the heroic or the shameful deeds, th

and make it live again before our eyes. For the old place is (to use the journalist's phrase) an "object lesson" of old manners; it is a proof of ancient genius, a clue to old romance, a legacy of vague desire. The many items of the place-the beds and walks with their special trick of "style" the parterre, the promenoir, the maze, the quincunx, the terraces, the extravagances in ever-green sculptures of which Pope spoke-what are they but the mould and figur

have but to turn to the old poets, and to note how the texture of the speech, the groundwork of the thought, of men like Mi

fects of Nature and Man. The old ground embodies bygone conceptions of ideal beauty; it has absorbed human thought and memories; it registers the bequests of old time. Dead men's traits are exemplified here. The dead hand still holds sway, the pictures it conjured still endure, its cunning is not forgotten, its strokes still make the

bright in th

e besmeared with

ed or hearts drooped in this vicinity. Eyes that brimmed over with laughter or that were veiled with tears looked on these things as we look on them now-drank in the shifting lights and shadows on the grass-watched the waving of the cedar's dark layers of shade against an angry sky, "stern as the unlashed eye of God," and all the birds were silent-once took in the sylvan vistas of trees, lawn, fir-ridge, the broad-water where the coots and moor-hens now play (as then) among the green lily-pads and floating weeds, regardless of Regulas in lead standing in their midst; once dwelt upon the lustrous flower-beds, on the sundial on the terrace-noonday rendezvous of fantails-on the "Alley of Sighs," with its c

ent from window, open door, terrace, arbour; in the stillness or in the wild rhetoric of the night, the familiar scene, momentarily flashed upon the brain's retina, may have sub

happy wedlock or its open sorrow, its endured wrong. The place is identified with the fortunes of old families: for so many generations has the old place been found favourable for lovers' tales, for youths' golden dreams, for girls' chime of fancy, for the cut and thrust of friendly wrangles, for the "leisures of the spirit" of student-recluse, for children's gambols and babies' lullabies. Seated upon this mossy bank, children have spelt out fairy tales, while bir

so deep-intrenched-in his garden; or that Waterton should ask to be buried between the two gr

ou feel. A thrill comes over you, a mysterious sense warns you that this is none other than the sanctuary of "the dead," as we call them; the place where, amid the hush of passionless existence, the wide leisure of uncounted time, the shades of once familiar presences keep their "tongueless vigil." They fly not at the "dully sound" of human footsteps; they ask no sympathy for regret which dare not tell the secret of its sorrow; but, with the gentle gait of old-world courtesy, they move aside, and when you depart resume occupation of ground which, for the sake of despairing wishes and memories of an uneffac

a dead past open out vistas for one's imagination and drop hints of romance that

ll of an old garden. The very trees have

is silent

scenes, its j

is its ow

us, restless, clamorous being which we call life"-has somehow tinged the place with a sensibility (one had almost said a wizardry) not properly its own. And this superadded quality reaches to the several parts of the garden and is not confined to the scene as a whole. Each inanimate item of the place, each spot, seems invested with a gift of attraction-to have a hidden

f men, so vain