Year: 1868

For moderate men, thirty acres of
space are usually much more than they
can command for garden. Gardening
on large scale is costly in the labor
which it requires, even if land were
cheap, which it certainly is not. You
may have ample health and sweetness in
timer spots than thirty acres, provided
your garden be not surrounded by high
brick walls, in the old and perhaps in
the modern manner. Even with them
one may not fare very badly. There are
some charming old gardens in the Twick.
enham and Hampton country, though
they are mostly rigidly enclosed within
four walls of brick as the parlor or the
sleeping room. In sense, gardens of
this narrow and curtailed size and sort
are in the nature of apartments of the
house, and very gracious and pleasant
chambers they are. Even in those wild
ernesses of houses which are spreading
far and wide in the suburbs of London
and the other great centers, the little
square spot at the back door is notlaugh-
able, judged from proper point of view.
tits not garden in the sense in which
Hampton Court Palace or .Kensington
has gardens, any more than the rooms
are rooms compared with the saloons of
the palace. e, Hr


But it is an open air chamber in which
of a summer evening a man and his
wife may delude themselves most
agreeably and proitably into the notion
that they survey the loveliness of nature
and the marvels of creation. Why should
they not? There is not nearly so much
illusion in these humble delights as
there is in the costlier delights of more
ambitious folk. If rightly placed, gar
den to be full of delight need be no more
than broad and ample piece of well
kept lawn, with flowers, borders and
fragrant hedges. All that you want is
soft and pleasant carpet for the feet, lit
tie pieces of bright color for the eye,
gracious prospects, and the perfume of
honeysuckle, thyme and the like. There
must be also sheltered walk with
gravel for the winter days and
night. But it is vile blunder to cut a
garden up with gravel walks, which are
pleasant in no sense. And the worst of
it is that in not one garden in hundred
are these walks broad enough for three
persons to be abreast with full comfort.
People unaccountably prefer couple of
narrow strips to one broad alley. And
it is hardly less blunder to take up
space with craftily devised hower-beds
of many cunning combinations of form
and color. AS Bacon says of the SINH
liar knots of figures in his time, "You
may see as good sights many times in
tarts." For the great point of garden,
| if it is to be for the great refreshment
of the spirit of man, is simplicity.


The simpler it is the fewer chances
there are of its getting out of ordor, and
so disturbing the eye and mind of its
possessor. To idle men who have moth
| ing better to do than to make the gar
den business, this will not count. But
to busy and absorbed men the avoid
ance of every slight root of irritation and
the corresponding gain of serenity are
worth anything. Nor are complex and
artificial pleasures ever really soothing.
They may distract or divert, but the
use of a garden is that it diverts with
out stimulating. 1t composes the mind,
even in the midst of grayest cares, to
wholesome passivity.


| The anxieties of the world, cares of
business, excitements of politics, are re-
duced and paled in man who can en-
| joy the sweetness of a homely garden.
But garden that is show-place, or the
imitation ola show-place, is no more re.
freshing to the spirit of sensible man
than the sight of ballroom crowded
with beauties and dandies. 1t only re-
quires little courage in withstanding
the gardener. who is invariably the
/ worst of professionalpedants. They are
all more or less like that gardener of
whom Mrs. Poyser said that he was
as cock who should think that the sun
had risen on purpose to hear him crow.
But the delight of having a garden,
grassy simple and ''plain in its neatness,"
is worth any number of decisive ruptures
with these two superior beings.-PaU
Mall Gds ettee.