_January_ 29, 1907.

MY DEAR AUNT JANET,

My den looks out, as I told you in my last letter, on the garden, or,
to speak more accurately, on _one_ of the gardens, for there are
acres of them. This is the old one, which must be almost as old as
the Castle itself, for it was within the defences in the old days of
bows. The wall that surrounds the inner portion of it has long ago
been levelled, but sufficient remains at either end where it joined
the outer defences to show the long casemates for the bowmen to shoot
through and the raised stone gallery where they stood. It is just
the same kind of building as the stone-work of the sentry's walk on
the roof and of the great old guard-room under it.

But whatever the garden may have been, and no matter how it was
guarded, it is a most lovely place. There are whole sections of
garden here of various styles--Greek, Italian, French, German, Dutch,
British, Spanish, African, Moorish--all the older nationalities. I
am going to have a new one laid out for you--a Japanese garden. I
have sent to the great gardener of Japan, Minaro, to make the plans
for it, and to come over with workmen to carry it out. He is to
bring trees and shrubs and flowers and stone-work, and everything
that can be required; and you shall superintend the finishing, if not
the doing, of it yourself. We have such a fine head of water here,
and the climate is, they tell me, usually so lovely that we can do
anything in the gardening way. If it should ever turn out that the
climate does not suit, we shall put a great high glass roof over it,
and _make_ a suitable climate.

This garden in front of my room is the old Italian garden. It must
have been done with extraordinary taste and care, for there is not a
bit of it which is not rarely beautiful. Sir Thomas Browne himself,
for all his _Quincunx_, would have been delighted with it, and have
found material for another "Garden of Cyrus." It is so big that
there are endless "episodes" of garden beauty I think all Italy must
have been ransacked in old times for garden stone-work of exceptional
beauty; and these treasures have been put together by some
master-hand. Even the formal borders of the walks are of old porous
stone, which takes the weather-staining so beautifully,