ees everything,
but is itself unseen, or, at all events, unregarded. My study-window
looks down upon Dreamthorp like a meditative eye. Without meaning it,
I feel I am a spy on the on-goings of the quiet place. Around my house
there is an old-fashioned rambling garden, with close-shaven grassy
plots, and fantastically clipped yews which have gathered their
darkness from a hundred summers and winters; and sun-dials in which the
sun is constantly telling his age; and statues green with neglect and
the stains of the weather. The garden I love more than any place on
earth; it is a better study than the room inside the house which is
dignified by that name. I like to pace its gravelled walks, to sit in
the moss-house, which is warm and cosey as a bird's nest, and wherein
twilight dwells at noonday; to enjoy the feast of colour spread for me
in the curiously shaped floral spaces. My garden, with its silence and
the pulses of fragrance that come and go on the airy undulations,
affects me like sweet music. Care stops at the gates, and gazes at me
wistfully through the bars. Among my flowers and trees Nature takes me
into her own hands, and I breathe freely as the first man. It is
curious, pathetic almost, I sometimes think, how deeply seated in the
human heart is the liking for gardens and gardening. The sickly
seamstress in the narrow city lane tends her box of sicklier
mignonette. The retired merchant is as fond of tulips as ever was
Dutchman during the famous mania. The author finds a garden the best
place to think out his thought. In the disabled statesman every
restless throb of regret or ambition is stilled when he looks upon his
blossomed apple-trees. Is the fancy too far brought that this love for
gardens is a reminiscence haunting the race of that remote time in the
world's dawn when but two persons existed,--a gardener named Adam, and
a gardener's wife called Eve?

When I walk out of my house into my garden I walk out of my habitual
self, my every-day thoughts, my customariness of joy or sorrow by which
I recognise and assure myself of my own identity. These I leave behind
me for a time, as the bather leaves his garments on the beach. This
piece of garden-ground, in extent barely a square acre, is a kingdom
with its own interests, annals, and incidents. Something is always
happening in it. To-day is always different from yesterday. This
spring a chaffinch built a nest in one of my yew-trees. The par