realms of art and criticism, let us cast away chalk and
charcoal for palette and brush and show in floral, arborescent, redolent
detail what is the actual pictorial excellence of these New Orleans
gardens.

For notwithstanding all their shut-in state, neither their virtues nor
their faults are hid from the passing eye. The street fence, oftenest of
iron, is rarely more than breast-high and is always an open fence.
Against its inner side frequently runs an evergreen hedge never taller
than the fence's top. Commonly it is not so tall, is always well clipped
and is so civil to strangers that one would wish to see its like on
every street front, though he might prefer to find it not so invariably
of the one sort of growth--a small, handsome privet, that is, which
nevertheless fulfils its office with the perfection of a solid line of
palace sentries. Unluckily there still prevails a very old-fashioned
tendency to treat the front fence as in itself ornamental and to
forget two things: First, that its nakedness is no part of its
ornamental value; that it would be much handsomer lightly
clothed--underclothed--like, probably, its very next neighbor;
clothed with a hedge, either close or loose, and generously kept below
the passer's line of sight. And, second, that from the householder's
point of view, looking streetward from his garden's inner depth, its
fence, when unplanted, is a blank interruption to his whole fair scheme
of meandering foliage and bloom which on the other three sides frames in
the lawn; as though the garden were a lovely stage scene with the fence
for footlights, and some one had left the footlights unlit.

[Illustration: "Thus may he wonderfully extenuate, even ... where it
does not conceal, the house's architectural faults."]

A lovely stage scene, we say, without a hint of the stage's unreality;
for the side and rear fences and walls, being frankly unornamental, call
for more careful management than the front and are often charmingly
treated. (Page 174.) (See, for an example of a side fence with front
half of wire and rear half of boards, page 174, and for solid walls,
pages 180 and 184.) Where they separate neighbors' front lawns they
may be low and open, but back of the building-line, being oftenest tight
and generally more than head-high, they are sure to be draped with such
climbing floral fineries as honeysuckles, ivies, jasmines white and
yellow, lantanas, roses or the Madeira vine. More frequentl