Its heightened beauty produces the disposition that
delights in what is beautiful in form and colour. Its
queenly graciousness of mien inspires the reluctant
loyalty of even the stoniest mind. Here, if any-
where, will the human hedgehog unroll himself and
deign to be companionable. Here friend Smith,
caught by its nameless charm, will drop his brassy
gabble and dare to be idealistic ; and Jones, forgetful
of the main chance and "bulls" and "bears," will
throw the rein to his sweeter self, and reveal that
latent elevation of soul and tendency to romance
known only to his wife !

"There be delights," says an ancient writer,
"that will fetch the day about from sun to sun,
and rock the tedious year as in a delightful dream."
This tells, in terse English, the pleasures of a garden
and the instincts that are gratified in its making. For
a garden is Arcady brought home. It is man's bit
of gaudy make-believe— his well-disguised fiction of



i8 GARDEN-CRAFT.
an unvexed Paradise — standing witness of his quest
of the ideal — ^^his artifice to escape the materialism of
a world that is too actual and too much with him.
