pruners" go before to clear the way, and the diggers follow. Behind them is a desolation like the track of a whirlwind. The wasted effort bestowed on this destruction should be given to encouraging the many dwarf and creeping things which cover the nakedness of the land.

Happily, in the wild garden we may defy conventionality unreproved. In our capricious climate cover is needed long after the calendar proclaims the advent of spring; and if March delays to sweep away the last of the litter, Nature will soon draw a mask of green over her untidiness. It is under these conditions, in the half-shade and shelter of a deciduous coppice, that the lilium auratum, the panther, with some of the other lilies, and not a few of the most beautiful irises, develop to perfection. Here, too, should it not be indigenous, we may naturalize the lily of the valley and Solomon's seal-seen at its best when lifting its graceful head out of a carpet of wild hyacinth.

Forest trees are beneficial to some flowers from the partial shade they afford; but speaking generally, they are inimical to plant life. They exhaust the soil, and deprive it alike of sun and rain. The air, however, of antiquity which they lend should atone for these evils; the inconvenience should not be removed by cutting them down. "Thank goodness, it takes three centuries to grow an avenue of oaks," was the consolation of the guests who drove home down the newly-planted avenue of a plutocrat, who had entertained them at dinner, and had overdone the ostentation. Evelyn regrets that men are more prone to cut down than to plant, and relates with approval the anecdote of Ulysses, who, returning from his wanderings, found his father planting a tree. Being asked why he did so at his age, the old man replied to his unknown visitor: "I plant against the day when my son Ulysses comes home."

The author of "Silva" might well turn his delightful pages with increased pleasure when he remembered the millions of trees which its advice had I called into being.

Where planting is necessary, the configuration of the ground should be accentuated, not minimized. The taller trees should be placed on the high ground, and those of more moderate growth be reserved for the valleys. The contrary method is productive of tameness by equalizing the level. It was the belief of Kent and Brown that the "works of Nature were well executed, but in a bad taste." Their mania was for levelling, for producing a smooth bare surface, whereon to reconstruct Nature; our effort should be to reverse their process; the essence of the wild garden is that it leaves Nature intact in all its essential features. Nature should not be forced, says Sir William Temple; "great sums may be thrown away without effect or honor, if there want sense." Nor should the eye be forced, for, as Repton points out, “The eye of taste or experience hates compulsion, and turns away with disgust from every artificial means of attracting its notice." We are bidden to believe that every ornament of a woman's dress is a survival of some article of use. A bridge should be so placed as to cross the water; and roads should follow the lie of the land, and not meander from sheer imbecility. So, too, everything should be congruous to the scene. A Chinese shoe will not fit an English foot, and a pagoda is an anomaly in an English landscape.

An eye for form as well as color is indispensable for successful planting. A bold effect, ably conceived, will be lost if the site be chosen without judgment. The little bays formed by trees and shrubs should not be blocked by a mass of tall flowers. The intrinsic beauty of their form will not, however, be marred by a carpet of dwarf vege

tation. Erect, stiff plants should not occupy the ridge of a bank while the shrubs which have drooped over it are relegated to positions where their tendency becomes an eyesore! Nature loves mystery, and a glimpse of color through the brushwood is often more attractive than an unobstructed vista. Plants lose by repetition, especially if they recur at measured distances. The habit of the eye is to take in one object at a time, and it should not be distracted. A group of lilies against the dark foliage of an evergreen needs no adjunct. The sum of the matter is that the eye unconsciously searches out points of vantage. It should be the effort of forethought to see that it has a pleasing object whereon to rest.

If it be true that every woman who puts a ribbon in her bonnet incurs a responsibility to society, a similar remark may be made of the world of flowers. The laws of color must remain a sealed book to those who are afflicted with color blindness. There are others who in dress, in furniture, and even in the arrangement of a bowl of flowers, show a nice discrimination, but who seem to leave their taste behind them when they close the front door. A pattern-bed might be made much more effectively in any other material than flowers; and in that case its designers would produce a work of art. Yet a violent contrast of crude color seems to cause them no pain; and, because it is consecrated by custom, the regulation red, blue, and yellow of geranium, lobelia, and calceolaria is held to be a pleasant relief to the eye. But when did Nature ever grow a formal mass of scarlet or crimson and fence it in with a thin blue line, and then in sheer wilfulness balance it by an equal quantity of yellow? "God Almighty planted the first garden," and somehow in her painting of coppice or moor or meadow Nature never goes wrong. Here we shall obtain lessons in

color, more easy of appreciation than the laws laid down by art. Nature employs a bold contrast at times, but her rule is harmony; and much of the secret of her success lies in the abundant drapery of green by which she veils and softens her colors.

The association of such flowers as tritoma and the rose-colored Japanese anemone, and a delicate harmony chosen from the perennial phloxes. make a pleasing blend as summer wanes. Then pass from the sunlight to some cool glade in the coppice or shrubbery, and mark the effect of "Honorine Jobert," the white-flowered Japanese anemone, gleaming against the dusky shadows, the appropriate home, throughout the changing seasons, of lilies of the valley, monkshood, columbine, and larkspurs, of white lilies, ferns and saxifrages-not one of which seems out of tone. Here it must be remarked that not every flower which a delicate sense of color would place in the half light is patient of this treatment. The tender yellow of some of the evening primroses is beautiful as they open in the twilight; but the plant loves to bask in the sunshine. As the low-toned flowers suit the shade, the warm yellows, scarlet, crimson, and orange, are enhanced by the sun's rays. In a climate such as ours, masses of dead white should be sparingly used. As a relief to the darker purples and lilac their employment is desirable. Simplicity and broad effects should be the object aimed at, a result obtainable by the massing of kindred tints.

"I like your essays," said Henry III to Montaigne. "Then, sire, you will like me I am my essays." And what is gardening but a series of essays, written in the book of art and nature? Here, as elsewhere, the style is the man. When Bacon pauses in laying out his artificial garden to ordain that there should be "mounts" whence to look out on the distant country, and

a "desert or heath" planted "not in any order," he proves that the world had not been able to kill all the wild joy of Nature. But it is where man is left alone with Nature that the impress of his individuality is chiefly apparent. Here the eye for form and color must make good its claim under new conditions, and bold effects take the place of the niggler's puny scroll-work. is the best of a man's intimacy with the lore of Nature and of the accord which subsists between them. Andso the genius loci be not disturbed-the man who grows two flowers where one grew before is a benefactor to his kind.

It

We need not fear the development of that bucolic mind which is said to come of turnips and fat cattle. Diocletian could wield the Empire of Rome, and Cromwell a kingdom which was somewhat akin to it; but both loved their flowers. As the Laureate said recently of Burns: "One hand on the plough and the other on the harp, that is the ideal life." The busy hand that plants in hope or succors some sufferer, leaves the mind free. From Bacon's stately eulogy to the last essay on gardening-commendable for its spirit, if not always for its literary meritthere is evidence of the same constraining impulse to give thanks for an indwelling source of happiness. We may feel with Renan that the task is not a thankless one: "La fleur, c'est l'acte d'adoration que fait la terre à un amant invisible, selon un rite toujours le même." In the wild garden there is no room for ostentation and that desire to distance one's neighbors which is beginning to take the zest out of honest employment. The varying conditions which dictate and make possible a wild garden scarce invite comparison. Here

1 The devoted gardener, who wishes to know what has been said or sung by a multitude of authors ancient, mediaeval, and modern-about nis favorite pursuit, will find ample encouragenent in Mr. A. F. Sieveking's book, "The Praise of Gardens" (Dent and Co.), a second edition of

there are no carnation clubs, nor the latest rose, restricted by a fancy price, so that the wealthy may boast for a year or two of its exclusive possession. Here we need fear "no enemy but winter and rough weather"-no competitor but Nature; and we may disarm her by turning pupil. "Nature is commanded by obeying her."

That a garden is the last retreat of the solitary and the sad, is only a fraction of the truth. To the motley crew of her worshippers' the Court of Flora is always open, and, best of all, to the poor. The man who feels that his "craving for the ideal has grown to a fine lunacy," may plead that he gardens for something to do; but in truth he only obeys the law of his birth. Those on whom the sweet compulsion is laid must needs comply. And if it be true that no bad man loves flowers, may we not learn a whole sermon full of charity when we see that Puritan and Cavalier, Tory and Radical, meet here in the truce of God?

There is an underlying meaning in the saying that flowers grow only for those who love them. We will not press the thought beyond the point to which any one would wish to carry it. If we deny humanity to what we call the inanimate world, we may translate it into our dealings with what some deem the only creatures of God's hand. The blessing is on him that considereth the poor; and the poor are the weak. The eye that is quick to note, and the hand to aid, will carry the habit beyond the precincts of the garden. Where compulsion hardens or sours, the sunshine of sympathy will develop. It may be said this needs much knowledge. So does knowledge of character; and how few of us are really developed. What

which, recently published, has come into our hands since this article was put into type. The new edition contains so much fresh matter (including especially an historical "Epilogue," with many illustrations of "formal gardens') as to be almost a new book.

was destined for a goodly plant too often grows dwarfed or awry. Consult their tastes; for tastes, to those who have them, are the requirements of healthy life. Place them where they are "happy," i. e., where Nature designed them to be, and, having marked the result, apply the same treatment to the human plant. Take some clytie from its gloomy corner and place it where it can turn lovingly to the sun god, and let some modest flower that droops beneath the glare of day seek its congenial retirement. Of those which were killed by misapprehension of their needs, or which never knew what it was to live, we can only say in hope:

"In Eden every flower is blown." For ourselves, if we are wise, the The Quarterly Review.

mournful song of Horace will be often in our ears, "Linquenda tellus." We must leave our earthly home; and if none of the trees we tended so lovingly follow us to the grave except the cypress, what of that? The heir may not be ungrateful. Some sap of the old stock may flow through the branches, and he may have noted that we cherished with especial care some tree that a dead hand had planted. We need not be greedy of statues; our memory is a living one. The seed we have sown will not perish from the earth; for when Nature, half reluctantly, resumes her wonted course, she will gather in her nosegay the flowers we brought her. "Now they are dead," says Victor Hugo, "they are dead, but the flowers last always."

The priest, Wolfgang Wieser, having incurred the displeasure of his bishop, owing to his advanced views on certain subjects, is assigned to a remote and obscure parish among the mountains of Styria. He learns that his predecessor died insane, but for a long time is unable to discover the cause of this.

The following extract is made from his daily journal:

September 13.

At length I have made the discovery. And have learned more than any one else in the world about my predecessor. O Heavenly Father, what a terrible fate!

On the eve of the feast of the Nativ

• From "The Eternal Light" (Das ewige Licht). Translated for The Living Age by Hasket Derby.

ity of the Blessed Virgin, a beautiful night in early autumn, while I was quietly saying my prayers, my elbows happened to press a little harder than usual on the lid of my desk. It cracked with my weight, and something within gave way. One of the little partitions had started; by the light of my candle I discovered a secret drawer and saw a manuscript.-He preserved the seal of confession inviolate, but here I am not the confessor, and incur no censure. And so I have read this tale of the past, and not closed my eyes the entire night. He intended to commit this to the flames, but his summons came all too soon. I place it in my journal.

THE SEAL OF CONFESSION.

It was nineteen years since I visited the shire town, in fact not since I had

completed my studies. For this reason the opportunity of going there, when it offered itself, had a special attraction for me. In my little parish there was nothing to hold me back, and I felt that the old dweller among the mountains might well play the part of a townsman for three days. A niece of mine had married a merchant, and they were bound to have the ceremony performed by their relative. After the wedding the young couple started off on a journey, and I found myself quite alone. I had not many acquaintances there, and the few I had I did not care to visit. A country parson leads his own life and finds himself ill at ease among the city people; after all, this is nothing to break one's heart about. Well, said I to myself, you can loaf about for a day, see what there is to be seen and then start for home; but in five minutes a fox would cover more ground than I did all one day in the town. Rain! I was in the middle of the street and there came a downpour. Should I seek refuge in an inn? Or in a café? Neither would do for me. Then I saw people crowding into a great building. What is there in there? I asked, for I could easily see that it was no church. O, it was the county courthouse, and an interesting case was being tried today. You had best go in, I thought to myself; it will serve to pass away the time till the train goes. Was the thought inspired from above? Or was it wanton curiosity on my own part? A man standing at the bar of justice ought not to be regarded as a spectacle good for killing time.

Once in, I pressed forward and got up to the railing, as far as it was possible to go. There, in front, stood two of them with black plumes in their hats and long knives, pointing straight upwards like blades of grass. And between them the poor sinner himself, his hands clutching a crucifix. From the mountains, as I saw by his jacket,

otherwise I had no knowledge of him. The man filled me at once with pity, he seemed so utterly crushed! His face looked as if he were dead, and stood there a corpse; great pearls of sweat were on his brow. But the eyes yet alive and cast about, as if imploring aid. A man still quite young, and this hour is to decide the question of his life. The gentlemen read a while from written papers, then they talk a while, when they read again, and it seems the man has actually murdered an old woman. He was after money. He says No and No, he never did it, as sure as there is a God in Heaven! Of course that did him no good; what does a denial amount to! Such proofs! That very evening-it was Easter Saturday-he is seen going from his sawmill along the path leading to the old woman's little hut, and no one saw him come back that evening. The next morning some one going by to church looks in at her window, to see if she will come along, and sees her lying on the middle of the floor in a pool of blood. Struck down, as they show, by some blunt instrument. By her side a blue pocket handkerchief also bloody; it belongs to Tobias Steger-that is the name of the accused-his prayer book, too, is found in the hut. They send for him to the church and take him away in the middle of the High Mass. Traces of blood are found on his working-clothes. Right and left he makes denial; he talks about having the nose-bleed; the old woman looked after his washing and mended his clothes; that that was the reason why he was there, and that was the reason his bloody handkerchief was there, and his prayer-book, between the leaves of which he had placed the florin to pay his washing with, he had absentmindedly left on the table. To the question how long a time he had spent at the hut that evening, he replied: quarter of an hour or more, he could not say exactly; she had counted up his