THE PEACOCK'S 
 PLEASAUNCE 
 
 By 
 
 E.V:B.
 
 RA D iMiiH j 
 " I
 
 THE PEACOCK'S PLEASAUNCE
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 SEVEN GARDENS AND 
 A PALACE 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY 
 
 ARTHUR GORDON AND 
 F. L, B. GRIGGS 
 
 Crown 8vo
 
 THE PEACOCK'S 
 PLEASAUNCE 
 
 BY 
 
 "E. V. B." 
 
 WITH EIGHT FULL- 
 PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 LONDON : JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD 
 NEW YORK : JOHN LANE COMPANY. MCMVIII
 
 Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & Co. 
 At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh
 
 SWJP 
 
 A Peacock's Prologue 
 
 IN the Middle Ages, and in far older 
 times, in the days of the earliest 
 Christians, the Peacock is understood 
 as a symbol of Eternity, of Immor- 
 tality. In the Catacombs at Rome there 
 remains a faded fresco, or mosaic, in which 
 are represented two peacocks, standing at 
 the head and at the foot, of the tomb 
 where lies CORNELirS MARTTR." 
 No other epitaph ; only this sign the 
 Argus of a hundred eyes : bird of the 
 hundred glories of silver or of gold. 
 
 Immortality : Eternity : it is enough. To 
 be immortal is to be never perishing. It 
 means living, abiding, enduring for ever. 
 
 Thus also, in our own day, Burne-Jones, 
 when he made the marble monument for 
 a greatly beloved lady, turned aside from 
 common usage in such matters, and carved 
 a green laurel breaking up through the 
 stones of a tomb, and a Peacock sitting 
 in the branches with his long length of
 
 A Peacock's Prologue 
 
 drooping plumes. . . . And the World, 
 vaguely wondering, glanced at the monu- 
 ment and passed on, regardless of the 
 Master's meaning. 
 
 After this, it is chilling as a frost in 
 June, to be told that it was the fabled 
 incorruptibility of the peacock's flesh, that 
 caused the bird to be considered an emblem 
 of the Resurrection ! 
 
 The Peacock is the royal emblem of 
 Burma, whose kings traced their descent 
 from the sun: and the Burmese use it as a 
 conventional finial, carved in wood, to orna- 
 ment the roofs of their dwelling-houses. 
 
 Throughout unnumbered cycles of the 
 sun, in India, and amid all other ancient 
 lands of the shining, changeless East, the 
 Peacock is held sacred : the mythic symbol 
 of the Peacock existed, and exists. 
 
 But the full meaning of it, at least in 
 Burma, is esoteric. It is secret ; imparted 
 only to a small and select number. Can 
 this be the reason why we seem to under- 
 stand so little ? 
 
 The White Peacock, more especially in 
 countries where the glory of the sun is 
 great, is always I believe the most ideally 
 beautiful of the two varieties ; and chiefly 
 when his pure white plumes stand up around 
 him arrayed like a circle of the milky way, 
 vi
 
 A Peacock's Prologue 
 
 glittering with every movement a galaxy 
 of silver stars. 
 
 The likeness or image of a Peacock, 
 (white ones taken from the life) has been 
 chosen to enliven here and there a few of 
 these pages. 
 
 The mystery still clinging around a 
 creature so resplendent in its beauty, and 
 of a race so ancient, may perhaps be felt 
 to be in keeping with a sense of things but 
 little present to the mind of many : things 
 often lost in a world filled with hurry and 
 the rush of larger interests. 
 
 With some, we know there is most surely 
 a sense of sympathy with the inner spirit of 
 Nature as perceived in the last and least, or 
 in the greatest, with the strangeness or the 
 wonder or the beauty, or as at times the 
 pathos. The feeling is born of love and 
 reverence for that, which as one of our poets 
 said " is but a name for an effect whose 
 cause is God." 
 
 Many a small mystery one may have noted 
 in earth or air, which can be only lightly 
 touched, lightly grazed, as it were by the 
 wing of a fly as it swept past a wild-flower. 
 
 A half-mythical peacock was, it is related, 
 seen by Herodotus in Egypt. It is sup- 
 posed to have had something to do with 
 the phoenix : but none now can learn its 
 vii
 
 A Peacock's Prologue 
 
 history. Alexander the Great was so much 
 pleased with the beauty of the peacock that 
 he ordered none should be killed ; and it was 
 at about his time they were brought into 
 Greece. There they rapidly increased in 
 number. Pliny speaks of the pride and 
 glory the peacock takes in himself. " He 
 taketh no small pleasure in the eyes of his 
 feathers." 
 
 We read in a mystical allegorical poem 
 by Ferridudeen Athay the Persian, "The 
 Language of Birds," that the Peacock intro- 
 duced Satan into Paradise under the form 
 of the Seven-headed Serpent. The bird was 
 expelled from Eden and the joys of the 
 Sidra and the Tuba, the two Trees which 
 confer immortality and perpetual Happi- 
 ness. 
 
 "Although I am the Gabriel of birds, 
 and to make me, the Painter of the invisible 
 world gave his pencil to the Genii, my lot 
 has been lower than that of the Archangel. 
 For I contracted a friendship with the Seven- 
 headed Serpent, and from Eden I was driven 
 out into solitude, deprived of my high rank 
 and punished by the ugliness of my feet. 
 Yet do I still retain the hope of being re- 
 leased from my obscure abode on Earth, and 
 restored to the Eternal Mansions." Not 
 despairing, thus laments the Peacock. . . . 
 viii
 
 A Peacock's Prologue 
 
 Travellers in the East record their delight 
 at the splendour of the wild Peacocks that 
 decorate with brilliant colours the trees in 
 the forests and jungles of India. There 
 occurs a beautiful little bit of landscape in 
 Heber's travels : " On the summit of the 
 bank that rose near the Grove of Mango 
 trees was a Hindu Temple approached by 
 one of the grandest flights of steps I have 
 ever seen. Around it the ground divided 
 into hillocks and pinnacles by the effects 
 of the rains ; and on every pinnacle sat a 
 wild peacock, who doubly protected by his 
 own divine character and the acknowledged 
 sanctity of the place, displayed his gorgeous 
 feathers to the setting sun. Their numbers 
 and extraordinary beauty filled the mind 
 with wonder." This expression "displayed" 
 their feathers, as here used, is quite correct. 
 To any who may have seen a peacock 
 spreading out his feathers in the sun, turn- 
 ing this way and that his lustrous neck, it 
 is clear that he beholds " a Peacock in 
 Pride ! " that is, with all the plumes spread 
 out ; the old Heraldic type of greatness and 
 royalty. The Crest, of a Peacock in Pride, 
 was only awarded to the gods, and to 
 Emperors and Kings and the Greatest on 
 Earth ; it was meant to show that those 
 of highest dignity ought to provide for 
 ix
 
 A Peacock's Prologue 
 
 others, with an infinity of Eyes to watch 
 over their welfare. 
 
 The emblem of Renown was painted all 
 over eyes and ears to see and understand 
 everything, and to fly everywhere impelled 
 by the breath of Glory. 
 
 Even now, in this twentieth century, 
 matter of fact as in most things we are, 
 and notwithstanding all our scientific per- 
 ception of eye and intellect, the idea of 
 the Peacock still retains a measure of its 
 old occult meaning, although the germ of 
 that meaning and the reason why, may be 
 lost, and though legend and fable are all 
 entirely modern, compared with the ancient 
 mysteries of Hindu and Burmese religions. 
 
 A peacock feather will scare the demons ; 
 yet there be some to whom the presence of 
 the bird is but another word for malison 
 instead of blessing a bringer of sorrow 
 rather than good luck. Gardens are there, 
 where round about some ancestral House, 
 the peacocks pace all day and curve their 
 sapphire necks and expand the jewelled 
 brilliance of their fan, or roost in quiet 
 amid the blackness of overshadowing cedars; 
 and where no presage of evil on account of 
 them, will ever assault the happiness of 
 Home. 
 
 Other houses again, cannot admit within
 
 A Peacock's Prologue 
 
 their doors even a single feather of the pea- 
 cock without some untoward accident occur- 
 ring, or some disaster befalling the inmates. 
 There is the oft-told story of a country 
 house, and a lady who one day while sitting 
 in the drawing-room upstairs, laughing and 
 talking with a party of friends, suddenly 
 exclaimed, starting up and hurrying to the 
 window, " Oh, the Peacock ! " She opened 
 the window and instantly disappeared. The 
 startled guests who had rushed after her, 
 looking down beheld the lady lying dead 
 upon the gravel beneath the window, whilst 
 a beautiful peacock stood near her in his 
 Pride, with his round of outspread plumes. 
 
 Stories of peacock myth or fable are 
 many, and we know that superstition with 
 coincidence accounts for much. Yet who can 
 wonder if the fear and superstitious dread of 
 this magnificent bird of ill-omen, should at 
 times fill one with dismay ? Another tale is 
 told of a fine old mansion somewhere in Wales 
 that had remained empty and tenantless for 
 a number of years. A tenant at last was 
 found ; and the family arrived on a brilliant 
 day in the middle of June. It is said they 
 all went out into the garden, and round to 
 the stable court-yard to meet the horses 
 coming from town. They heard their tramp 
 and the voices of the stablemen who were 
 xi
 
 A Peacock's Prologue 
 
 bringing them in, and one of the ladies went 
 forward before the others to receive and 
 welcome her own favourite riding horse, a 
 beautiful grey, whom she saw just entering 
 through the gate, led by the stud-groom. 
 The horse advanced with a little neigh of 
 recognition, but had no sooner stepped into 
 the court-yard than he suddenly stopped 
 short, reared up, and the next moment fell 
 back dead at his mistress' feet. 
 
 A few days after the owner of the house 
 received a letter from his new tenant, stating 
 that an over-mantel above the fire-place in one 
 of the principal rooms in the house had been 
 the cause of the death of a valuable horse, 
 and praying that it might be at once removed 
 out of the house lest a worse thing should 
 happen. This over-mantel had a certain value 
 of its own. It was a kind of drapery or 
 hanging, made of peacocks' feathers, enwound 
 with blue and green, and wrought curiously 
 in gold thread and silken needlework, and 
 sparkling with gems. It had been the gift 
 of a dear friend, and had been sent from 
 the Indies long ago. The Tenant's demand 
 caused surprise, but was immediately obeyed ; 
 and, with the order for the removal of this 
 peacock-hanging, a letter was sent by the 
 landlord to his Head Gardener, an old re- 
 tainer of many years' service on the estate, 
 xii
 
 A Peacock's Prologue 
 
 So at dead of night the aged, white-haired 
 gardener, bearing a lantern and a spade, and 
 carrying also the Evil-Eyed fabric over his 
 arm, made his way towards the secluded, 
 woody outskirts, of the Garden Wilderness. 
 There he sought, under some thick trees, for 
 a spot where the earth seemed newly dis- 
 turbed, and where weeds and wild ivy still 
 lay cut and scattered about. The old man 
 dug deep until his lamp shone on some 
 ghostly grey, smooth surface, down below. 
 There, he dropped the folded drapery down, 
 the earth was shovelled back into the grave 
 (for such it was) of the ill-fated horse, while 
 with ruthless foot, bright green feathers, 
 and relucent gold and emerald gems were 
 at once stamped and trod in firm. And 
 thereafter those tenants slept in peace. So 
 runs the tale. 
 
 And there is the monastic legend which 
 makes the Peacock unblest for young chil- 
 dren. The story of how the Holy Family 
 in their flight from Egypt, sheltered in the 
 centre of a thick juniper tree Herod's horse- 
 men being close at their heels. It was a wild 
 place, and the gorse pods all around kept 
 crackling and bursting open, and pea-chicks 
 screamed and disturbed the Child, who began 
 to cry and was nearly discovered by the sol- 
 diers. So Mary rose up and banned them 
 xiii
 
 A Peacock's Prologue 
 
 all round ! . . . And that is why gorse is 
 never to this day permitted in gardens, and 
 why peacocks are unlucky to babies, and 
 juniper is the " Wache Holde," or " Awake, 
 dearest ! " for it welcomed the Holy Family 
 and hid them. ; and then when danger was at 
 an end opened its boughs to let them pass 
 out. 
 
 Many more stories and legends no doubt 
 there are about the marvellous bird. But 
 more than these I have not heard, and nothing 
 further can I learn of any special interest, than 
 the little that has been set down here. Some 
 unknown, mysterious, peacock cult, I believe, 
 does somewhere indeed exist. What this may 
 be I know not. No one seems to have heard 
 aught of it. All we know is that, not all the 
 peacocks of the East, not all the gilded green 
 or dreamless dark of their myriad eyes, can 
 ever penetrate for us the gloom of ages. 
 
 Perhaps after all there is nothing to learn ; 
 unless beyond the unseen Door, which open- 
 ing at last, will show the unknown springs 
 of Life and Death : and show us the secret 
 of the Beautiful in sea and land and leaf and 
 flower, the origin and growth of Nature's 
 infinite variety, and the hidden keys of her 
 Paint-box. 
 
 Thoughts of the splendour, the mystery, 
 the Unknowable in the natural world of life 
 xiv
 
 A Peacock's Prologue 
 
 around us must be and are, far beyond any- 
 thing that might be looked for in so slight 
 work as these short essays save at times, 
 when some faint reflex of the influences 
 around us that we see and know, or that 
 we feel and are aware of, yet know not, 
 there is little else but a few impressions 
 noted here. And they would seem scarce 
 tangible enough to fit in with the mystic 
 note of Pavone, or Peacock symbolism. 
 Yet may one not venture sometimes to 
 connect even slight impressions with things 
 that are imperishable ? 
 
 With some, who in their hearts care for 
 these things, the feeling is always fresh ; the 
 interest ever new ; the sweetness and the 
 pleasure cannot decay. 
 
 And now as we stroll around the peacock's 
 pleasaunce, we mark where two or three (not 
 white), lost in the glow of a summer day, 
 shake out a sheaf of glittering glory. There 
 is a singular arrangement noted about those 
 many-eyed feathers. Each little plumelet 
 that forms the so-called "eye," in each is 
 differently set, on a different plane, at an- 
 other angle from its fellow. The meaning is, 
 that each one may catch the golden ray as it 
 falls, and every plume may shine its best ; 
 something after the fashion of the revolv- 
 ing lantern of a lighthouse, where one after 
 xv
 
 A Peacock's Prologue 
 
 another every facet reflects in turn the 
 shining light. 
 
 True is it, though marvellously strange, 
 how Nature's ways are not to be compassed 
 by the mind of man. We have to sit still, 
 and remember a written word : "In wisdom 
 hast Thou made them all." 
 
 Once, when I was a child, I dreamed that 
 one morning very early, before the sun rose, 
 I went out into the garden and wandered 
 along the green terrace by the river. And 
 there stood a peacock in the dewy grass. 
 And the peacock was so beautiful, so full 
 of grace and colour, that I held up my 
 gown in my hand and danced. And the 
 peacock spread up his feathers of green and 
 gold, all eyed with purple, and he too danced 
 a minuet amidst the sparkling dewdrops. 
 
 XVI
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A PEACOCK'S PROLOGUE . . . r 
 
 I. PLEROMA I 
 
 II. ENIGMA . . ..... .17 
 
 III. A BEAUTIFUL WORLD ... 31 
 
 IV. THE HAUNTED WOOD ... 47 
 V. A WHITE EARWIG . . , .83 
 
 VI. AN (ALMOST) IDEAL CITY ... 97 
 
 VII. OF A LITTLE OLD HOUSE IN 
 
 BANFFSHIRE . . . . .113 
 
 VIII. ON THE BRIDGE AT LUCERNE . 127 
 
 IX. IN PRAISE OF BIRDS . T "~ . . 143 
 
 X. WEEDS OF THE GARDEN . . .179 
 
 XI. THE HUMAN INTEREST OF A 
 
 GARDEN . . . . . .209 
 
 XII. ART EDUCATION I . . . .221 
 II .... 243 
 
 xvu
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 SO SWEET THE HOURS OF 
 
 FAIRYLAND ! SO SAD IS 
 
 STERN REALITY . . . Frontispiece 
 ONE OF SEVEN Tofacepage 2 
 
 SUNLESS WEATHER . . . . 50 
 IN PRIDE . . . "POWDERED WITH 
 
 STARS". 100 
 
 IN DOUBT 124 
 
 OPPRESSED WITH A SENSE OF 
 
 LOSS 1 146 
 
 HE WALKS IN BEAUTY . , 182 
 
 IN LOVE 212 
 
 XIX
 
 MY grateful acknowledgments are due to the 
 courtesy of Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. for their 
 permission to include Nos. IV., IX., and X. ; and 
 to Mr. Richardson Evans for a part of No. III., 
 and to the editor of The Throne for No. XI. 
 
 E. V. B. 
 
 xxi
 
 I 
 
 Pleroma 
 
 Fulness of Beauty : fairest among flowers 
 of the mountain.
 
 I 
 
 Pleroma 
 
 PLEROMA was discovered on the 
 Organ Mountains in South America, 
 and thence carried to England in the 
 year 1841. Sixty years ago: and 
 yet, so far as I know, it is still but rarely met 
 with there. Most of our English hothouses, 
 I believe, are entirely empty of its gentle 
 presence. And yet, if not to all, to me at 
 least, Pleroma is, of all lovely flowers, the 
 loveliest ; and perhaps it is also among the 
 strangest, in its nature and its ways. 
 
 On the table beside me, as I write, is a 
 little plant of Pleroma, about six or seven 
 inches in height, growing healthily and happy 
 in a tiny three-inch garden flower-pot. There 
 is no sign of the root being pinched for want 
 of room. The size of the flower, two inches 
 at least across, is not less than it would have 
 been had the whole plant grown up full-sized 
 and tall. This sort of patient quiet is, per- 
 haps, one of its chief characteristics. 
 
 But the colour! the purple of it! lumin-
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 ous as of a lamp shining through the broad 
 petals who can presume to describe ? 
 
 The flower is poised sideways on its stem. 
 And here would seem to be something like a 
 small mystery. Why should this one flower, 
 alone among -all the rest of the world of 
 flowers, hang sideways on its stem ? The 
 position is unnatural ; unlike that of any 
 other. However, it must surely be that grow- 
 ing thus, we who love Pleroma may be en- 
 abled to understand her best ; and thus our 
 eyes shall look the more joyfully on her 
 purple grace. In that place no other eyes, 
 so far as we can tell, would care to gaze, and 
 even to us she is known only after having 
 been long borne away, far from her own wild 
 home ; carried oflF over the sea to exist for a 
 time under glass in a few English gardens, 
 regarded by most gardeners as something 
 old-fashioned and gone-by. 
 
 In those lonely hills, among them that pass 
 that way, there is none who turn aside to 
 look. They that roam in the dusk of even- 
 ing seeking their prey, pass by and waste not 
 one glance upon Pleroma's bloom. The 
 jaguar and the keen-eyed lynx little do 
 they heed the purple miracle in their path. 
 The wild beasts that are in the mountain 
 tread it down. 
 
 Conies browse and play there, and small
 
 Pleroma 
 
 furry creatures take their pastime ; or Lamia 
 winds in sheeny length between the stalks of 
 grass and fragrant herbage when the fierce 
 diamond snake of the Organs sleeps in his 
 lair. Such as these inhabit the spot made 
 sacred by the fair beauty of Pleroma. The 
 solitary vulture, musing upon the dead, be- 
 holds not. The condor, with vast wings 
 overshadowing the sun, regards not. It is 
 nothing to them that those purple petals are 
 spread open, so even and so smooth fashioned 
 like a five-rayed star. Could it have been 
 for man's delight alone it was created ? At 
 night, when flowers also sleep, Pleroma re- 
 mains awake ; she hangs from her stalk wide 
 open and awake. Night and day, the light 
 and the dark, are alike to her. 
 
 Upon the crest of a rocky Organ slope, 
 facing the crimson West, rise the thinly scat- 
 tered groves of flowering Pleroma. At the 
 desolate moment ere yet sunset dies, the 
 glory of it flames through these hanging 
 lamps of violet. And many there be that 
 answer to the signal. Swiftly white-plumed 
 moths, one by one, in the day when they had 
 rent their silken shrouds, arising from the 
 earth made downy upward flight to court, 
 as it were, an unknown doom in the heart of 
 their purple oriflamme. They gaze upon it, 
 but they know nothing of the wonder of it. 
 3
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 Were I to tell the secret of Pleroma's 
 charm, it is this. It lies only in her pure, 
 most perfect simplicity. From the velvet grey 
 and pointed oval of her leaf so carefully 
 nerved with long unbranched veins united at 
 the tip, where each leaf inclines gently down- 
 wards to the surface of the flat, rounded, 
 violet petals, no spot nor shade of any deeper 
 tint is suffered to mar the fine breadth of 
 effect. This breadth in colour, or in light 
 and shade as painters use the term, is, I think, 
 one of the qualities that most inspire with 
 delight. 
 
 And when the flower's last end draws 
 near, each detail is so ordered that no 
 least attribute of life's loveliness is lost in 
 death. Not until the latest hour of life is 
 any change visible. No wrinkle clouds the 
 youthful smoothness of her glowing purple. 
 Only at the very last, just one petal will 
 calmly drop in the stillness of peace. Again, 
 after a little space, gently, unhasting, a second 
 petal falls. And so, one by one until the end ; 
 till all is done, and Pleroma's star has set. 
 
 Then five violet patches lie scattered lightly 
 on the earth around her roots. 
 
 There has been no decay, no sign of age ; 
 it is but a chill like no other chill, that has 
 passed across that exquisite bloom, and meekly 
 the call is obeyed. 
 
 4
 
 Pleroma 
 
 This, then, may be perhaps the moment 
 to whisper of a sudden deadly change, by 
 which at this time the plant is overtaken. 
 Up to the hour when her star declined, 
 the life- record of Pleroma had been so 
 lovely, her ways throughout the days of 
 her brief existence so full of a kind of reti- 
 cence, that one wonders whence comes this 
 new strange ugliness ? Whence is the cruel, 
 weird ferocity of sickle-shaped stamens with 
 their strong, hungry curve, their impatient 
 attitude of grip, ready to seize and crush the 
 prey. Disrobed of their soft petalling, these 
 stamens are now laid bare. Ruthless, they 
 lie in wait. The points or claws of them 
 shine black and rigid, and their joints are rosy 
 red. Pale moths (those newly risen ones), 
 small gnats frail ephemerae, born of hot 
 southern morns, and gay, fantastic, painted 
 flies, with blind vague flight tempt fate 
 within the lurid embrace of Pleroma's ruined 
 calyx. 
 
 The final sacrifice, I confess, I never actu- 
 ally saw. Indeed, I know not whether or 
 no my theory be absolutely true. Certain it 
 is, however, that Nature rarely errs in the 
 outward expression of secret character. It 
 may indeed be that evil lurks in the latest 
 phase of this peerless flower's existence. Yet 
 if living moths or light-winged flies have 
 5
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 been for long ages past ordained her food, 
 it follows that they have to be ensnared in 
 some manner. Strange, after all I know, or 
 think I know of her crimes, Pleroma in my 
 heart of hearts is not unqueened. She stays 
 there, almost without a rival. For beauty 
 is a thing apart, it can 'take no earth-stain. 
 Like the striving of the soul after Truth 
 the essence of it is divine. 
 
 The birthplace of Pleroma is to me entirely 
 familiar. And whenever I see her lovely 
 colour, a vision of those Organ mountains 
 whereon her flower abides, is also before 
 me. In vivid noonday light, I see the long 
 line of peaked and ragged rock showing 
 dark against the sky. Grey slopes, green 
 lawny spaces, forest-trees : and clefts of the 
 rock, where hide the spirits of the air when 
 winds blow wide the skirts of their misty 
 raiment ; when the deep music of organ 
 tones is heard pealing afar in solemn fugues, 
 while Echo answers with her faint refrain. 
 And well I know the mountain's shadowy 
 mysteries of moonlight. And the blackness 
 of night all glorious with the starry hosts 
 of heaven the sparkling myriads, beholding 
 from above. The scene is clear to me as 
 a painted picture, seen with the Soul's inner- 
 most insight. 
 
 But to consider with my eyes the wild 
 6
 
 Pleroma 
 
 solitudes of the Organ mountains as they 
 are, far away, within sound of the rush of 
 the Great River : to wander amid the purple 
 freshness of their flora for such a moment 
 of intensest joy, I must await the day when 
 the window opens, and I shall arise and go 
 forth whither the spirit leads. Unloosed 
 from mortal life : free of the body's sloth ; 
 free to follow on the wings of desire. 
 Neither let nor hindrance then. Seas and 
 land are not. Day and night in that hour 
 are as one. The dawn and the dusk, the 
 length of a thousand miles, or only across 
 a field. The yearning of a self-less love 
 carries us wheresoever we list. 
 
 I do not in reality know where, if any- 
 where on earth, are to be found those Organ 
 mountains. When Time has ceased I shall 
 know. Their place is unmarked on any 
 map that I have seen. It can scarcely be 
 that the name is out of date. There is a 
 pair of large globes terrestrial and celestial 
 with the date of the eighteenth century, I 
 used once to be acquainted with. On neither 
 are the Organs marked. For more than a 
 hundred years have these old globes stood 
 in the library window-recess of an old for- 
 saken house in the West of England. There, 
 in years gone by I used often to stand over 
 them and study them ; but never did I 
 7
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 make out Pleroma's Mountain range on any 
 part of their printed surface. . . . 
 
 And now visions of the wild hill country 
 empurpled with splendours of these petalled 
 stars, fades away, lost in immeasurable 
 space. 
 
 As for myself, never could I tire of 
 Pleroma. There may be some who glancing 
 through the page devoted to her praise, 
 will likely enough believe it overdone, and 
 that which has been so often said, will still 
 be said again, i.e. " Writers treat of flowers 
 and plants with over-much of sentiment, or 
 else they are too didactic." Perhaps a few 
 readers are able with all their heart to enter 
 into the strangeness of the wonder of any 
 flower of the field. But few in number are 
 they who rightly understand even the flowers 
 in their own garden, otherwise than as part 
 of a scheme of decoration. Very wearisome 
 are the long descriptions and directions for 
 how these " decorations " may best be grown. 
 Happily none can complain they have learned 
 from me anything at all about a plant called 
 Pleroma, neither the proper care of it in 
 our hot-houses, nor indeed anything at all 
 decisive of the place where it grows. 
 
 Painting never could portray the character, 
 nor poetry give in words the marvel of its 
 translucent violet. Yet a great longing 
 8
 
 Pleroma 
 
 possessed me to try the making of a little 
 sketch. And should the sketch seem too 
 bright and the praise too lavish, as of " heap 
 added unto heap" it is easy to turn to 
 any dictionary of gardening the reader 
 chooses and find Pleroma's story given like 
 this, copied from a gardening paper : 
 " Pleroma (from pleroma, fulness), referring 
 to the cells of the capsule. Syn. Lasiandra, 
 including Chetogastra, Melastoma, Michran- 
 thella, and Rhexia (in part). ORD. Melas- 
 tomaceae. A genus containing about one 
 hundred and twenty-four species of stove 
 or greenhouse shrubs and sub-shrubs, rarely 
 perennial herbs, often striggsopilose or hispid, 
 natives of tropical South America, being 
 mostly Brazilian. Flowers violet or purple 
 usually disposed in terminal trichotomously- 
 branched panicles large sometimes with 
 concave involucral bracts : calyxtutoe ovoid 
 campanulate urceolate. Leaves frequently 
 coriaceous petulate," and so on. " P. elegans 
 forms a fine exhibition plant when well 
 grown. Branches tetragonal ovate, acumi- 
 nate, &c., &c. Organ Mountains, 1841." 
 (So the Organs do certainly exist somewhere 
 although I find them not). 
 
 However scientifically dry and learnedly 
 correct, a description like this bears no sort 
 of likeness to Pleroma. There is in it nothing 
 9
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 to stir the heart, nothing that might inspire 
 any human being with the least wish to meet 
 with her. The very name " P. elegans " at 
 once destroys poetic feeling. 
 
 The colour of Pleroma somehow seems to 
 fascinate with a strange delight. It is lilac, 
 or in the nature of lilac, the poet's colour. 
 It is purple the imperial Tyrian dye. It 
 is the violet of divine inspiration. It is a 
 sense echo of forgotten gleams from unre- 
 membered hills of ancient lands, or from the 
 purple deeps of southern seas. It has come 
 down the ages to us through aeons of ante- 
 natal lives. This allurement of certain 
 natural colours sometimes felt within the 
 heart of many of us, has come by the way 
 of these remotest immemorial lives. How 
 otherwise can the alien charm of special 
 colours in nature be explained ? 
 
 For those at least, to whom the supreme 
 joy of Pleroma is unknown can anything of 
 this kind compare with the sensation which 
 at times comes to one like a dream whilst 
 following along a green footpath, through 
 some English meadow a'bloom with autumn 
 crocus ? Or when looking down as once 
 I looked over the shoulder of a barren hill- 
 top somewhere in Kashmir, and the eye rests 
 on a dream-lilac below, flooding over plains of 
 saffron ? . . . One or two perhaps may seem 
 10
 
 Pleroma 
 
 to feel a sudden thrill like the cadences of 
 an Eolian harp whilst walking in a garden 
 at moments when the sun breaks forth and 
 shines upon a border set with a certain small, 
 common, lilac gem-flower that has chanced 
 beside a garden walk. The plant is so 
 common, I believe scarce one in ten would 
 turn to look, or give a second glance as they 
 pass. Yet who may tell whence, or in what 
 dim ages past, may date back for these few 
 individuals the psychical attraction, of just 
 a touch of magic in the heart of a little 
 common, unhonoured, " Virginian stock " ? 
 
 I must not weary by praising any more 
 the purple flower which means so much to 
 me, Pleroma, fulness (of beauty). Now and 
 again the gardener will bring in a branch of 
 it lit up by one side-long violet star. In 
 silence he places it in a glass of water before 
 me, so that for a space I may gaze with silent 
 joy, dreaming perhaps a little of the sound 
 of the wind in the far distant Organ moun- 
 tains, and the glow of their wild Pleroma. 
 
 Does not the thought of one beautiful 
 thing lead on to thoughts of another? So 
 the colour of Pleroma recalls to my mind a 
 violet rainbow once seen, and its like to be 
 seen perhaps never more. And also of an- 
 other wondrous arch in the heavens, that 
 ii
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 appeared not long before, all built up of gold 
 and diamond dust. These two visions both 
 appeared to us one summer in the Highlands 
 of Inverness land of the storm and the sun- 
 burst of the glory of the cloud. A dark 
 sky gloomed between the red stems of some 
 old Scotch fir before the door, when a sud- 
 den rainbow flashed out, as it were, in our 
 faces. 
 
 The rainbow arched all across the whole 
 sky, as far-thrown it reached from horizon 
 to horizon. A rainbow so fiery and solemn, 
 so vividly brilliant, never before had our eyes 
 beheld. A part of it absolutely dazzled with 
 excess of light and colour, as the bow shot 
 upward athwart the hills till lost in the glim- 
 mering keystone of its stupendous arc. It 
 flamed of rubies and molten gold, and shone 
 with amethyst and waned into mist and broke 
 again in fire, mirrored and multiplied above 
 and beyond and within till at last with a 
 thousand mystic changes, the rainbow died 
 into the dark. 
 
 At the first great glow of it, birds who 
 were roosting earlier that evening, had awoke 
 and dashed hastily from their dim green tents, 
 out into the open firmament. Bats were flit- 
 ting round, and two horses grazing in the 
 field below the house were moved to lift up 
 their heads from the grass, and stood still 
 
 12
 
 Pleroma 
 
 and gazed with us. . . . " Prismatic colours 
 are so radiantly glorious that a rainbow is, 
 each time we see it, a joyful surprise, and the 
 most solid natures are moved by it." All 
 of us silently looked up with rapture, and 
 the household had come out to stare and 
 wonder. We heard them calling to one 
 another, " Look ! look ! the beautiful rain- 
 bow ! " 
 
 Then as it faded, cold and leaden-hued 
 the whole landscape had become. A little 
 stir and rustle might be heard as the birds 
 settled to sleep again among the branches. 
 The two horses in the field bent down their 
 heads and gravely returned to their feeding. 
 Evening closed in, and the moon rose. 
 
 As we thought upon the splendour of the 
 sight we had seen, we felt how that great 
 arch rising from the earth, growing up to 
 heaven's height, and in radiance descending 
 again to earth, was but a type of the perfect 
 human life that all may long to live yet 
 few attain. 
 
 But will ever mortal eye behold again as 
 ours did just once the marvel of a violet rain- 
 bow ? It was far away in the hills. All day 
 the sun had shone. Then, as it drew towards 
 evening, blue-black clouds in tumultuous 
 layers began to overspread the sky. On the 
 old stone bridge where brown waters tumble
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 and rush over the Falls of Fech near Kin- 
 gussie, we stood awhile watching the circling 
 foam below. Something made us look up ; 
 and there laid as it were upon the gloom 
 shone the glory of a violet rainbow ! 
 
 No seven colours such as other rainbows 
 were there, only one broad band of purple 
 and green. Just where this glory arose, on 
 the one side it stained a violet path across the 
 walls of a low white cottage under the hill 
 with a garden and in the fence a little garden 
 gate, and across the hill-side woods at the 
 back, and across two or three apple trees 
 and a central rose-bush flushed with pink, 
 and across the figure of a woman standing 
 at the garden gate. A peacock by her side 
 shook down emerald splendours. Very still 
 and preternaturally tall, wrapt in shimmer- 
 ing sapphire, triumphantly beautiful, stood 
 the figure at the gate. Clothed with the 
 rainbow, crowned with light, we saw her 
 stand, as though ready to rise and soar above 
 God's symbol in the cloud, like the Iris of 
 Hope ! As we looked we could not speak : 
 a sense of awe for the moment kept us 
 silent. 
 
 Then light began to fail upon the cold 
 hill-side ; the blue-black heavens loomed 
 down heavily : and the form of exulting 
 Hope our eyes had beheld faded utterly away.
 
 Pleroma 
 
 There was but a very old woman, with some- 
 thing white about her head, leaning wearily 
 over the gate ; and near her, with drooping 
 plumes, stole away into the shadows a bird 
 of ashy whiteness. With a weird sensation, 
 as if awakening from a dream we turned 
 away following the long road home, not 
 saying many words to one another ; knowing 
 that at such an hour, amid wild muirs and 
 dimly desolate paths, the Unknown is near 
 and-;,spirits walk.
 
 II 
 
 ^Enigma 
 * 
 
 It t's there : it is here : 
 It lives : it is not.
 
 II 
 
 THE sweetness of the garden in its 
 mid-day silence and soft veiled 
 sunshine awoke thoughts both sad 
 and strange. I thought of a far- 
 away Rock beyond " the salt, estranging 
 sea," a thousand miles away. I saw The 
 Rock as it stood alone, walled in with surf 
 above the deep blue sea, in all the deso- 
 lation of a burning, fiery summer. In a 
 moment of time the whole scene lay 
 mirrored in imagination's glass. I saw a 
 white Spanish Villa in the midst of a dried- 
 up terraced garden, every window closely 
 shuttered, with vain hope to hold the heat 
 at bay. I saw tall palms and long spikes 
 of flowering acanthus bend beneath the 
 terrible blast, blowing straight from Sahara. 
 I saw the birds drop dead as they winged 
 across the garden, and the goldfish, gasping 
 or dead, lying on the surface of the water 
 like red autumn leaves, in the little square 
 tank by the terrace steps. Save within the 
 shrunken shadow of the house, in all the 
 19
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 place there was no shade ; for every green 
 leaf was shrivelled and fallen away from the 
 burnt-up trees. For a mile all round the 
 whole sad place stretched a scorched and 
 arid desert, with long, white, forsaken roads, 
 whereon no living creature moved desolate, 
 dried up, dusty roads. And over all the 
 small, cruel sun in heaven glared fiercely 
 down. I saw darkness approach ; stealthily 
 at first, then all at once, it came suddenly 
 in one instant, and the awful sun-terror 
 relaxed. One by one closed doors and 
 windows opened, and the old Professor, with 
 his pretty daughter Miriam, who together 
 had endured this long ordeal of heat, stood 
 for awhile on the terrace that surrounded 
 three sides of the house, and breathed 
 fresh life as the day bowed down and black 
 night fell. Both seemed exhausted with 
 the heat, and but few words passed between 
 them. Most likely the Professor pondered 
 some deep scientific question of the day, 
 whilst his daughter's thoughts wandered 
 away far otherwhere. 
 
 And now impictured on the magic glass 
 I witnessed a curious little mystery. Father 
 and daughter had gone back into the house, 
 where just one lamp was lit for the Pro- 
 fessor in his study. There he sat himself 
 down amidst all his heaped up books and
 
 ^Enigma 
 
 papers, while Miriam bade him good-night, 
 saying she was tired and would go upstairs. 
 So she shut the door and went up. 
 
 The staircase was opposite the door that 
 gave on the terrace ; a short stair with one 
 or two sharp turns. At the very first step 
 Miriam tripped ; her foot had caught in 
 something, and she nearly fell. The en- 
 tanglement, whatever it was, seemed to 
 catch her at every step, as if a net were 
 spread. And she had to stumble on as well 
 as she could, tripping and almost falling all 
 the way at every step, up to the top ; and 
 even then it stretched across the passage 
 and right into her room. All this time it 
 was quite dark, and not until she had found 
 a match and lighted a candle did she find 
 out what " the thing " really was. Nothing 
 but a slender a very slender, very long, 
 pink thread ! Round the chairs and tables 
 and round her feet the pink snare wound 
 about, worked across and across just the 
 same as up the stairs. The question was, 
 who in the world could have done it, and 
 for what possible reason ? At last, after 
 struggling entirely free (for break the thread 
 she could not), Miriam sat down to recover 
 her breath and to unravel and draw out the 
 lengths of thread, winding them into a ball. 
 And then Justine was called ; and then the 
 
 21
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 other domestics gathered on the stairs, full 
 of curiosity, and their mistress questioned 
 each in turn and made every sort of inquiry. 
 Not a soul belonging to the Villa knew 
 anything about the matter, or could throw 
 the least light upon it. The fact remained, 
 that a snare had been laid apparently to 
 entangle the first person who happened to 
 set foot on the stairs. 
 
 Some one, indeed, ventured to suggest it 
 might possibly have been the work of the 
 gardener Antoine, the jealous lover of 
 Antoinette the cook, and that the snare was 
 intended for her. Upon which Antoinette 
 fired up, declaring that "Antoine had no 
 cause for jealousy ; and, even if he had, he 
 was far too clever to plan a useless silly re- 
 venge like that ! " The " mystery " therefore 
 remained unsolved. Nobody could explain 
 it, though everybody had a great deal to say 
 about it. The only certainty appeared to 
 be that there was not an inch of such a 
 thing as pink thread, wool, or worsted in 
 any one's possession in the house at the 
 time. Yet this thread measured several 
 yards in length a long yarn, indeed ! It 
 was troublesome enough to wind it all up, 
 and certainly it took a long while ; but 
 Miriam, being careful and rather fond of 
 hoarding things, thought it might come in 
 
 22
 
 Enigma 
 
 useful for something or other some day ; 
 so she patiently made it up into a pretty 
 pink ball and put it away. . . . 
 
 At last the time came for Miriam and 
 her father to desert for a season their 
 island home and sail for England, and the 
 Villa was shut up, the girl having first 
 most carefully locked away the mysterious 
 ball of pink thread in a cupboard, the 
 key of which, moreover, she carried off in 
 her pocket. 
 
 Three months after, the family returned, 
 and the Villa on the rock was made ready 
 to receive them. The garden, bright with 
 flowers and sunshine, lay bathed in all the 
 balmy loveliness of a Southern winter, and 
 the sun-terror of last summer quite for- 
 gotten, with all the pain and suffering it 
 had brought in the pleasant excitement of 
 returning home, with the unpacking of 
 trunks and arranging of the rooms in 
 order. 
 
 At last, Miriam suddenly remembered 
 about the locked cupboard and its con- 
 tents, and hurried to her room with the 
 key. Almost the first glance when the 
 cupboard door was opened showed her that 
 the thread had disappeared. The work- 
 basket was there on the shelf just where 
 she had left it. The unfinished bit of em- 
 2 3
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 broidery, and skeins of coloured silks, and 
 all the other things, scissors and thimble, 
 &c., were there in the basket, but not the 
 ball of pink thread. It was nowhere to 
 be found ; it seemed utterly gone. Every 
 corner of the house was diligently searched 
 in vain. Miriam, greatly perplexed, knew 
 not what to think and for the moment 
 gave it up. After a while a vague surmise 
 began to take possession of the girl's mind. 
 After all, could it have been really thread ? 
 or and the bare thought of such a thing 
 made her flesh creep could it have been 
 a Worm ? " Yes," she said to herself, with 
 sudden inspiration, " it must have been 
 a frightful, long, dry worm . . . plainly 
 it was nothing else ; and the creature un- 
 wound itself, and it slipt away through 
 the keyhole slipt downstairs and out under 
 the terrace door and away into the garden ! " 
 Then she reflected that somewhere, in some 
 old book of travels, she had read of strange 
 distorted growths that in times long past 
 were not unknown, born of intolerable, 
 tropic heat heat such as last summer's 
 on some volcanic rock like the island where 
 they lived, far out at sea. Could it be, 
 then, that a Worm of inconceivable length 
 had indeed been bred here by the fiery might 
 of the sun, and that it had crept one day 
 24
 
 ^Enigma 
 
 for shelter into the cool darkness of the 
 Villa to hide from that scorching sun-glare ? 
 Miriam believed she saw the whole thing 
 clearly now. The thread must certainly 
 have been a Worm. Then a feeling as of 
 strange unpleasant glamour came over her 
 with a cold shiver, the pink thread was 
 a living being ! Long yards of a living 
 Worm. . . . Presently she recalled that, 
 when her feet were caught in those living 
 toils that night, the tangle had seemed 
 endued with an extraordinary sort of mus- 
 cular, squirming strength ; and also she 
 thought she remembered it felt curiously 
 cool, or even clammy, to the touch. She 
 shivered again to think how she had handled 
 it made knots of it made a ball of 
 it and shut it up in a cupboard, locked 
 the door, and left it there for months. 
 And then there came a nervous tremor for 
 fear the Worm perhaps was now at large, 
 and, as she imagined, not far off in the 
 garden ; probably concealed at the bottom 
 of the little square tank, where the gold- 
 fish died in the hot weather, close under 
 the windows by the terrace steps. Fancy 
 pictured the creature even now at this very 
 moment quietly sliding in, ready to en- 
 snare her again, about the stairs or passages 
 in its unnatural net. 
 
 25
 
 Starting up at the thought, Miriam ran 
 down, calling to her father as she swiftly 
 passed the study in eager haste to lock 
 the garden door. " Oh, father," she cried, 
 " it was not pink thread that night last 
 summer that tripped me up as I went 
 upstairs to bed. It must have been, it 
 could have been nothing else, a long, 
 dreadful Worm a live, living, pink Worm ! 
 Only to think how I undid it and made 
 knots and drew it and wound it tight 
 in my hands ! But the creature is bolted 
 and barred out safe enough now." And 
 she shoved the door-mat against the barred 
 door for greater security. Hearing his 
 daughter's cry, the Professor came at once, 
 pausing an instant on the threshold. Then 
 he, with the wisdom of the aged, replying 
 said, " Child, no doubt there exist in every 
 place beings both short and long. But 
 to the lean and thready, as you describe 
 this long Worm, what are your bolts and 
 bars of iron ? To such as him * stone walls 
 do not a prison make.' Call me should the 
 thing re-enter the house. I will immedi- 
 ately come, and will straightway bottle 
 him ; or I will constrain him weightily 
 between the leaves, within the covers of 
 one of my biggest books." Having thus 
 spoken, the Professor retreated into his 
 26
 
 ^Enigma 
 
 study, shutting out the whole of the out- 
 side world, immersed, as was his wont, for 
 hours in the old, strange world of books 
 for him more familiar, more illimitable 
 than the other. 
 
 The pepper-trees cast light, gauzy shadows 
 across the stone paving of the little terrace, 
 and tall palms waved their long green hands 
 above it. Along the walls a lizard now 
 and then glanced by in gold and green 
 under the sun. Late-blowing blossoms of 
 rose-apple glowed in beauty on the tree, 
 or dropt rosy petals amongst the snows 
 of " pico-paloma " that embraced their roots ; 
 while broad suns of glowing mesembrian- 
 themum starred every foot of bare earth. 
 And in the Villa Garden all was tranquil ; 
 until a soft sea-wind arose and washed the 
 white surf and the sea against the rock, 
 where it shone like a jewel in the blue. 
 Then mists began to blur the surface of 
 my mirror and I saw nor heard no more. 
 Yet my thoughts were not idle, turning 
 over in my mind the small, unimportant 
 aenigma that at one time seemed so greatly 
 to confuse the wits of the family and house- 
 hold who lived in the Villa. They have 
 long since departed ; and whether the pink 
 thread were really a thread, or whether 
 27
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 it were in truth a living creature, none 
 now may ever know nor guess the riddle 
 aright. Miriam has almost ceased to think 
 of it, and her learned father has quite 
 forgotten. Antoinette and Antoine are 
 married and gone away. The deserted 
 Villa is To Let. The little square tank 
 under the terrace wall is dry, and the 
 garden, once tended with such loving care, 
 has grown into a wild wilderness of neglected 
 charms. It is little else save a battlefield 
 of flowers and weeds, where the finer parts 
 of each are lost in the never-ceasing contest 
 for some first, supremest place. 
 
 And far down in among the obscure 
 roots of weed and flower, who may know 
 what manner of mystic beings, strangers 
 to the bright light of heaven, lurk con- 
 cealed and hid amid the thick green of 
 their upper growth ? Part of earth and 
 in part shreds of the inner spirit that once 
 transfused all metals in the mines, it is 
 certain that the eye of man not often sees 
 them. Perhaps, indeed, such things may 
 have no real existence, save only now and 
 again in the fireflies' fires, or in the splen- 
 dours of many-coloured butterflies flickering 
 alike over flower and barren weed. 
 
 Heat-waves of tropical intensity in their 
 season again will lay waste all that remains 
 28
 
 Enigma 
 
 of the Garden on the Rock, or in their 
 season rains will descend upon it. Into the 
 empty house strange visitants will pass by 
 unseen ways, returning as they came. But 
 should it chance that new tenants have 
 settled in, then a trouble of some sort 
 must ensue. Poor, humblest of paravails, 
 tenants of the lowest stories, and dark 
 Enigmas will once more arise and spin 
 their webs and snares to perplex the mind 
 of Youth and Age. And who is the seer 
 that shall tell us which is which? what 
 is ? or what is not ? " In mystery our 
 soul abides."
 
 Ill 
 
 A Beautiful World 
 
 House joined to house. Field after field destroyed. 
 The whole country made unlovely.
 
 Ill 
 
 A Beautiful World 
 
 "The Eye that Sees, the Heart that Finds 
 
 a doubt Surrey is the 
 most beautiful place in the 
 world ! That is of course 
 in soberest reality, it is not 
 quite that. But to-day, this fine August 
 day, sitting under the oak that veils with its 
 shadow more than half the lawn belonging 
 to our Surrey cottage, one can but think 
 something like that in one's heart, even if 
 the lips say it not in so many words. Our 
 oak is magnificent in form and in height and 
 breadth. The fine, rough trunk of him 
 rises straight up without a flaw, and his 
 branches spread wide all round. There is 
 nothing alive within their green fastnesses. 
 Nothing at least that can be seen. No in- 
 sects ever drop on the book if one reads there 
 sitting on the long bench beneath, not 
 even those tiny emerald green moths made 
 like unto a bishop's mitre, though so com- 
 mon and well remembered on other oaks. 
 33 c
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 Birds seem not to love it much, scarcely 
 perching for a moment, soon flying down to 
 light upon the grass. Sometimes an owl 
 has been heard to hoot unseen at evening 
 within the leaves, just to let us know he's 
 there. Sometimes he seems to whisper some- 
 thing very low ; and it has happened, should 
 there be a sound of reading aloud within the 
 lighted parlour near, the owl will hoot from 
 the oak a sort of monotone, in the same key 
 as the reader's voice. 
 
 The cottage stands upon a tableland 
 along the wide valley : and along the valley 
 come wild wandering winds that toss the 
 oak's lighter branches hither and thither, 
 and hardly ever let them rest. The winds 
 will blow for days and nights together with- 
 out ceasing. Storms that might shake to 
 its centre some still greater tree, do but 
 make known the strength of that strong, 
 steadfast stem that has been building up inch 
 by inch during the last two or three cen- 
 turies. For the tree is young. He stands 
 there in all the glory of the prime of his 
 age ; not more than five-and-twenty, per- 
 haps, reckoned as with the age of a man. 
 Long, long may he stand in his place un- 
 moved ; the tap-root of him established 
 firmly, deep-rooted, straight down in the 
 earth good for another five hundred years 
 34
 
 A Beautiful World 
 
 or more. At Beninborough Park, in York- 
 shire, an oak a thousand years old was once 
 pointed out to me, under whose shade St. 
 Augustine is believed to have preached. 
 
 On the left a great Surrey Down looks 
 down upon lawn and tree and house with 
 many a broad field between rolling away to 
 westward, calm and untroubled save by the 
 iron road that runs at its foot. No living 
 creature, beast nor man, is often seen to 
 climb the dry, grassy steep ; the even surface 
 is undisturbed save by a few breadths of 
 pine plantation, cast carelessly upon it, as it 
 were. Yet groups of little children may at 
 times be discerned from the oak-tree lawn, 
 little white or grey dots climbing up the 
 steep. Often they will come home with a 
 big white empty snail-shell or two, held fast 
 in their hands or wrapt in their pinafores. 
 These are relics, it is said, from those ancient 
 days when the Romans encamped there. 
 Snails were reckoned then a rare delicacy, as 
 in these days they still are, in many parts of 
 France and Italy. So those old Romans 
 carried their snails with them to the Surrey 
 Downs, across the Channel. And one may 
 please one's fancy with the thought that the 
 empty shells the children find are the very 
 shells the Romans threw away after dinner, 
 that have ever since during all these centuries 
 35
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 of sun and wind lain bleaching on the hills. 
 It is more likely, however, that the snail- 
 shells now picked up are far more modern, 
 and may have belonged to generations of de- 
 scendants from the Roman soldiers' succulent 
 favourites. Whether it be so or not, the big 
 snails themselves are not found here living 
 or so I am told only their empty house. 
 
 It is a fair scene we look on from the seat 
 under our great oak. Mysterious too in a 
 way, these hills appear as one gazes up at 
 their long line against the sky, not knowing 
 well what may lie beyond the verge. 
 
 From our small cottage lawn, green 
 meadows hedged about with nut and maple 
 and dwarf oak, and interlaced with wild 
 roses and rosy brambles, lead across to the 
 rise of the Downs an immense stretch of 
 corn between ; a cornfield that, in these ripe 
 August days may be likened to some 
 splendid breviary laid open upon the hill- 
 side bound in vellum, lettered in gold, rich 
 with painted capitals and miniatures ; each 
 page shot through with scarlet. We almost 
 regret that the day is now near at hand 
 when the farmer's fine chestnut team will 
 enter the field, and the quartering of the 
 ripened corn will begin. And as the red- 
 gold falls before the resistless might of the 
 strange, big, winnowing fan, an exquisite 
 36
 
 A Beautiful World 
 
 little flowering white and pink convolvulus 
 will come to light, twining round every one 
 of the tall cornstalks. The existence of 
 this delicate loveliness is hardly guessed 
 until it is cut down : yet in its way I think 
 it helped to enrich the beauty of the corn. 
 
 The oak we love has one shortcoming. 
 He bears no acorns. A few oak-apples, 
 indeed, litter the grass beneath after a gust 
 of wind. They were fresh and very pink 
 for the old-fashioned festival of May the 
 twenty-ninth. But acorns, beloved of fairy- 
 land and me, there are none. Stay ... on 
 closely regarding this lowest bough that 
 leans down like an outspread hand, it is 
 surely spangled over with a fresher green. 
 The bough is covered thick with acorns ! 
 Small indeed, and oddly formed are they, 
 and one might well have missed perceiving 
 them at first. 
 
 What has a tree like this to do with such 
 unimportant, little, flattened, green buttons ? 
 Our lordly oak should have sprung from the 
 ideal of acorns large and polished; in shape, 
 a long oval, with clear-cut cup. Perhaps 
 the flat buttons will grow out ; and one is 
 aware that there exist more than one sort of 
 English oak about twenty-six species in all, 
 I believe. So these acorns may come to be 
 larger before they fall. 
 37
 
 The Peacock's Pleasatmce 
 
 And now the oak on the Surrey lawn 
 already is for me a memory, and nothing 
 more. A green memory : for I shall never 
 behold its branches break into tawny gold in 
 autumn ; nor grey and bare and desolate, 
 " in a drear nighted December." We have 
 looked our last goodbye, and are returned 
 home ; home, where so near at hand London 
 comes striding into the country, our hearts 
 and minds filled with a vision of a Tree ; with 
 the green of a leafy outline that for full three 
 summer months had filled in the square of 
 eastern window in my upper room at the 
 cottage ever present when I awoke, not 
 absent when I slept. 
 
 And now I seem to know now that I am 
 far away from it the true reason why Surrey 
 is beautiful. It is not solely for the beauty of 
 its woods and hills, and old-world villages, it 
 is because for broad miles and many, around 
 where we lived with the oak tree in August, 
 we saw not any sign anywhere of the hideous 
 disfigurement of " Advertisements ! " The 
 charm of the peaceful fields and wild commons 
 is unspoilt by giant reminders of suffering 
 humanity : or at least, only by the ever hate- 
 ful reminder, an advertisement of Building 
 Lands. It is a happy country ; or it gives 
 the idea of happiness. It is " a beautiful 
 world." 
 
 38
 
 A Beautiful World 
 
 Yet even here, in April, close to London's 
 outskirts, in the garden, in the cherry 
 orchards, this world, defaced and old and 
 worn though it be, is still beautiful as a 
 dream. If people would but leave it alone, 
 and not break it up, and build ugly houses 
 all over it. If they would but teach the 
 children in the schools to see ; teach them 
 to love nature with a warm heart-love, to 
 care about the green glory of young leaves 
 and springing grass and sunset clouds, and 
 all the joy that lies around them and which, 
 as a rule, they know not, because they have 
 never learnt to see. Few see naturally " with 
 the eye that feeling gave," but the eye can 
 be taught. I do not know how it is to be 
 done in towns ; and yet, the teacher having 
 nature-love in his heart would find the way. 
 For the children of the poor, I suppose, the 
 enjoyment of beautiful things is not con- 
 sidered " suitable," although who can doubt 
 the immeasurable good that such enjoyment 
 could be to them ? And for schools of a 
 higher class, surely none whose eyes had 
 been opened early and trained to see, would 
 in after years care to plant big, hideous 
 boards in the midst of pleasant fields, or to 
 paint God's hoary rocks with advertisements. 
 Besides their glaring inappropriateness, these 
 things keep constantly before the mind, the 
 39
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 human infirmities, the human domestic 
 worries which we desire to put far from us 
 when away from home. All this is a sore 
 subject ; the range is wide and there is so 
 much to be said, and sometimes it seems so 
 hopeless, and sometimes one leans to argue 
 the other way, and think that the feeling 
 must be born in the child and grow, and that 
 it never can be taught. The growth and 
 multiplying of schools of art does not seem 
 to have made much progress in this direction. 
 Self, must be cleaned out of the heart to 
 make room for it, and who is to do that ? 
 
 In the orchard among the apples, are two 
 white wonders of old cherry trees. The 
 grass grows high around and under them, 
 green with that green of living, emerald fire, 
 which, they say, is nowhere else but in an 
 English spring, or sometimes in Australia, 
 just after a bush fire, when the herbage 
 begins to spring again. Each long green 
 blade is tipped to-day with a white flower, 
 lightly hung, trembling as it hangs. It is a 
 child's fairyland, so light and lovely is the 
 flowery grass with nipped off blossoms, like 
 fallen snow between. But the sparrows did 
 it the trees are full of them ; chattering 
 and scolding, and vigorously pecking. It is 
 rather clever, the neat way they just nip out 
 andeatthe succulent littleknob underneath the 
 40
 
 A Beautiful World 
 
 calyx, letting the blossom quite intact other- 
 wise, with only a little round hole in the 
 middle fall on to the points of grass be- 
 neath ; and there it hangs. It is in the day- 
 time all their business is done. But come 
 again at sunset ; stand under the enchanted 
 trees and look up. There, indeed, is a 
 " Beautiful World," branching up and up 
 into the blue. Thousands of flowers are 
 gone, but countless myriads remain. The 
 brown branches are hidden under the white 
 that swathes them round. It is as though 
 unseen hands held up long wreaths against 
 the sky. Pale amber from the fading west 
 suffuses half the cherry tree above, while 
 lower down, shadows from the old garden 
 wall veil all in grey, the greyness of an 
 evening mist, cold and dim, contrasted with 
 the dream -light beyond. 
 
 Those fair, white garlands in all their 
 soft purity of tone, seem to wind and reach 
 up into vast unending heights, and as the 
 eye follows them, you are for the moment 
 possessed by some nameless feeling, by some- 
 thing like an infinite longing that cannot be 
 said in words. It is but for one bewildered 
 moment and then the cherry tree, covered 
 with its own glory of sweet earthly bloom 
 and blossom stands there before you itself 
 again. 
 
 4'
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 And yesterday, growing close beside the 
 corner of a plain old white vicarage house 
 near the church, suddenly appeared a rose- 
 pink tree. I had never before known that 
 tree in April ; and for years past, if seen at 
 all, it had seemed a poor and shabby tree. 
 The delicate rosy flush of its abundant, 
 large, half-double April blossoming, breathing 
 on the air a perfume quite ineffable, and every 
 flower-laden spray set also with pink pearls 
 of buds, was a surprise to fill the heart with 
 gladness. I think this Pyrus spectabilis flore 
 plena threw into the shade my own white, 
 simple cherry tree, and even a group of 
 standard peach, in which before I saw it 
 my soul rejoiced. 
 
 Yet who among the builders of houses 
 would think twice about destroying such a 
 tree, if its place were wanted for any ugli- 
 ness of piled-up bricks and mortar? A 
 beautiful world is about the last thing that, 
 as a rule, the many think about or care for. 
 A cheap world, a money-getting world, that 
 is the ideal nowadays ; and to secure this end, 
 no lovely thing in Nature is held sacred ; 
 neither the life of any wild bird or beast, nor 
 any charm of field or woodland. Devasta- 
 tion such as this is common enough; hap- 
 pening every day. I was not long since told 
 of a house and garden near Walham Green, 
 42
 
 A Beautiful World 
 
 which existed up to within a few years ago, 
 and now is absolutely gone ; blotted out by 
 streets so that its very site cannot be found. 
 That garden was entirely filled with the 
 finest " specimen " trees, all well grown and 
 very large, and many of them but little 
 known, or unique in this country. Of not 
 one of those trees has the life been spared. 
 
 There is a green lane dear to my child- 
 hood, that once I knew. In memory's picture 
 gallery hangs the likeness of it ; and often in 
 thought I wander along it as of old, from 
 end to end. From my father's door, the 
 road went past the carpenter's yard and the 
 tiny dame's school, and the old brewery, with 
 its gay little front garden, along by the green 
 hedgerows. The sunny side of the bank 
 used to be blue with speedwell and bright 
 with stellaria in their season ; on the other 
 side lay a grassy space, where little wild vines 
 with their slender tendrils might here and 
 there be found amongst the herbage rem- 
 nants of vineyards, that abounded near in the 
 old times ; passing the fir grove, where here 
 and there a gate led to some house by the 
 riverside, till the long lane turned under 
 deep-shadowed elms by the village church, 
 and reaches of " silver-streaming Thames " 
 appeared. I would not willingly ever again, 
 save in the spirit, pass along that green lane. 
 43 /
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 I know it to be now built up on every side, 
 crossed by the line noisy, dusty, desecrated. 
 They tell me such things must be, for people 
 must travel quickly, and houses they must 
 have to live in. But at least my garden here 
 is safe ; safe for my lifetime, be the end 
 far or near. 
 
 In a garden there should be no gloom, no 
 dulness, no damp, neglected spot. There, 
 all should be brightness and delight, and at 
 every turn a surprise, an interest, something 
 unexpected. And from between trim yew 
 hedges and spaces of sunlit lawn, your steps 
 should follow ever some gentle reach of ter- 
 race, or winding grass-walk into orchard or 
 hazel close, or wilderness of cedarn shade and 
 hawthorn and young beech, aglow in their 
 season about the roots of them with orange 
 berberis and periwinkle. And there should 
 be no stern master gardener ; but one who 
 knows how to deal tenderly with all his 
 children, and how to let them be. And then, 
 almost unawares will come patches of the 
 sweetest things, self-sown about the borders, 
 looking secure and happy. Little companies 
 of white violets in spring, will surprise you 
 ever and anon with their perfumed freshness. 
 Many-coloured primroses will smile at you 
 as they nestle at a rose-bush root. Forget- 
 me-not and wood-strawberries, and little 
 44
 
 A Beautiful World 
 
 lilac gems of Virginian stock, will shelter 
 under your old walls, and none will say them 
 nay. No rough hand essays to check the 
 briony if it choose by chance to clasp some 
 tall tree-stem. Only to that lovely criminal, 
 the bind-weed, would we be cruel. She, 
 alas ! must be firmly repressed, or she would 
 soon overmaster us. The plants in such a 
 garden, like living sentient beings, seem to 
 know that all are welcome. They and the 
 gardener understand one another, and there 
 reigns amongst them peace and prosperity. 
 
 The birds too are " let be," and every bit 
 of harm they do is repaid a hundred-fold 
 by the joy of their song, and the life their 
 merry manners impart to the garden. 
 
 But now the mid-day sun burns in the cup 
 of the blue gentian, and who can attempt 
 to describe its loveliness? A little square 
 raised plot, with a sun-dial surrounded by 
 white iris in the centre, is deep blue with 
 gentian of the Alps ; the garden is full of 
 them besides. 
 
 And without plan or intention there arrive 
 the loveliest contrasts. Here in a kitchen- 
 garden border, there are gentians under a 
 group of star anemone ; lapis lazuli and 
 scarlet flames. There, in the rockery, the 
 blue peeps from under a tumble of little 
 rose-cistus and pink phlox ; or again, the 
 45
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 sov'ran blue contrasts with gleaming yellow 
 of Arnebia echioides (the Prophet's flower) ; 
 while, perchance, a yellow butterfly on vagrant 
 wing floats wavering by. Yet that small strip 
 of unkept turf bordering a beech alley at the 
 other end of the garden is after all, to my 
 thinking, at times the very happiest part. 
 There, wild primroses have seeded, and the 
 grass is set with pale yellow rosettes ; some- 
 times an orchis crops up, or a brown or white 
 primrose or chequered fritillary, and there are 
 wood anemones, and dog violets, and wild 
 blue hyacinths. 
 
 A little bit of wildness in the midst of 
 cultivation, a little wilderness within the 
 garden's bounds, is very precious. And the 
 charm of it is enhanced if your paradise lies 
 in the midst of a great plain of cultivated 
 land surrounded by railroads and sown with 
 great staring advertisements ; and the cuckoo- 
 flowers that love moist margins of the meadow 
 grass just beyond your smooth-shorn lawns 
 may be full of a sweet, strange delight. 
 
 46
 
 IV 
 
 The Haunted JVood 
 
 The wood is never alone. In the trees, among the 
 branches, abides an unseen Presence. The voice 
 we heard is not the complaining of the wind, nor 
 leaves dancing in the breeze. Old thoughts, old 
 memories, old times, crowd upon the heart in 
 the wood.
 
 IV 
 
 The Haunted TVood 
 
 WEIRDLY human in outward 
 seeming are the trees of the 
 earth. Glad in sunshine and 
 how despairing in the gloom ! 
 This was the thought that the moaning 
 wind in the branches of two trees before 
 the window soon lulled to sleep. And the 
 reflex of a dream dreamed in the long-lost 
 years steals back, like the singing of a bird 
 before the dawn, like the whisper of reeds 
 before a lake of shadows. ... It is the 
 dream of a well-loved young fir-wood I 
 knew. Not grand nor beautiful, it had all 
 the sweetness of childhood, the rejoicing 
 strength and fulness of youth. The moss 
 grew in lowly beauty round the young 
 spruce's feet ; each lovely moss-tribe bearing 
 some peculiar sign and badge of its race : 
 tiny emerald cups, minute balls and seeds, 
 countless points of living green. And under- 
 neath the moss, in dark labyrinths, unseen, 
 self-centred in their own small cares, moved 
 another world of life a world of busy insect 
 49 D
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 life, a ceaseless round of existence circling 
 on and on, far down out of human ken, till 
 the ant is a giant to the myriads around, 
 ever and ever lessening, ever more minute, 
 more blindly careless and unknowing of 
 aught save their own small selves. At ten 
 years old, how delicious was that young fir- 
 wood ! Green and aromatic, each tree of it 
 well replenished with branches down to the 
 very ground ; full of grace and growth, and 
 fairy mazes through and through. And 
 now, it is ten years older. And the little 
 wood will long since have begun to show 
 bare and black, and none would care to 
 dream there now. . . . 
 
 Beautiful is the forest in every season, at 
 every hour of all the year. Beautiful in 
 the deep hush of midsummer, beautiful in 
 autumn, when the trees burn like lamps of 
 gold intensely beautiful beneath the winter 
 starlight. Look up into the starry night 
 through barred branches fretted overhead, 
 and own the dim mystery of these unleaved 
 forest aisles is worth a thousand days of 
 summer pride. The limes and sycamores 
 soon ceased striving with the wind, and the 
 dream grew thin, and the little fir-wood 
 slept one more within the grey shades of 
 memory. 
 
 Commonly speaking a wood is a wood. 
 5
 
 SUN1.KSS \VEATHKK
 
 The Haunted Wood 
 
 It is Sylva : a collection of trees. They 
 may fail through natural decay, or lightning 
 may rend them, or the woodman's axe may 
 fell them, or hordes of small untiring beetles 
 may sap the life out of them in places 
 where the gun has left no woodpecker alive 
 to save them or, by stress of weather, the 
 whole wood may be swept down. And then 
 the ground will be re-planted, and in time 
 a new wood will have grown up. The 
 Haunted Wood changes changes. Every 
 year, year by year, it changes. Once on a 
 time it was old ; century after century it 
 had stood, dark and gloomy, with great red- 
 stemmed pines ; the broad brown track 
 through the wood littered with autumn 
 leaves, or shining smoothly with summer 
 rain of pine needles. It was the work of 
 one cruel night, when the storm uprooted 
 half the wood. For the space of thrice three 
 twelve-months, from end to end the wood 
 lay bare. Broken trees of deathful grey, 
 knurred and scarred and rugged, grey- 
 bearded with long hanks of lichen hanging 
 dismally ; or lying prone, with gaunt up- 
 standing roots. The old path was obliter- 
 ated, and no new one made, for none cared 
 to cross a spot so desolate. The deep re- 
 cesses of the wood now lay bare, and there 
 was full daylight where sweet shades had
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 used to be. Yet all the time green rushes 
 grew strong and cool in many an oozy 
 hollow. And over all the place hints there 
 were as of some unseen movement, of green 
 things and seeds under the earth things 
 that knew the sun had found them out, 
 through the darkness underground. Also, 
 little shoots of deciduous trees began to 
 spring. Yet these outward signs of strong, 
 impelling inner life did not make the place 
 less cheerless, rather the grimness of it 
 grew. 
 
 It is told of a man who wandered there, 
 after some strayed sheep, in the long-drawn 
 twilight of a midsummer evening, that near 
 the farther confines of the Haunted Wood 
 he beheld strange things. A long procession 
 of wild beasts passed silently before his eyes 
 elephants, tigers, giraffes, camels, lions. 
 He watched them as they filed on, turning 
 neither left nor right, faring north between 
 him and the clear, cold sky-line. And all 
 those living creatures, half-transparent and 
 wholly rainbow-coloured, seemed as though 
 they were but appearances of painted glass, 
 like moving colours in some old church 
 window : violet and blue and amber and 
 fire-colour. The man who saw stood still 
 rooted to the earth, until the last strange 
 beast had passed. Then he forgot all about 
 52
 
 The Haunted Wood 
 
 his wandering sheep, turned and went away 
 to his house like one in a dream. And 
 silent as in a dream, it is said, he existed, 
 until the end came before next new moon 
 arose. Visions of many coloured beasts are 
 known elsewhere. In the Castle of the Isle 
 of Man there is a bed-chamber where they 
 who sleep have awoke at early dawn to be- 
 hold the self-same sight. Visionary rainbow- 
 tinted creatures marching in long procession 
 around the white walls of the room. Who 
 can tell how these things are? Who can 
 gauge the' mystery of the unknown anima, 
 the indwelling secret power within the out- 
 side shell of being ? We know not nor shall 
 ever know. . . . 
 
 The latest change in the Haunted Wood 
 is beneficent and thorough. It has renewed 
 its youth like the eagle. Dead trees have 
 been cut up and dragged away. Not a sign 
 of old decay is suffered to remain. No 
 barren roots now lift horned heads above the 
 brake-fern. Scarce any cleft, broken trees 
 remain hooded forms that seemed to come 
 and go as evening drew on ! No trace is 
 left of that other, older wood. All now is 
 fresh and young and joyous : full of the 
 sweet mystery of young summer, when she 
 empties lapfuls of wild-flowers all over the 
 earth. From whence comes this delicious 
 53
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 verdure where all had so long been austere 
 and barren ? Last year we could see with- 
 out hindrance the whole, as it were, of the 
 desolate wood. To-day, fragrant glades 
 and closes of wild copse lead who knows 
 whither? You are only aware for the 
 moment of a sense of boundless distance, 
 as you wander on, till suddenly checked by 
 a straight fence dividing off the heath and 
 open fields. In the place where ruin and 
 mis-luck once set their seal as it were for 
 evermore, smiles the green shiver of fresh 
 leaves. It is as a garden of flowers. Spark- 
 ling patches of tiny potentilla, growing quite 
 flat down in the moss and grass, red clouds 
 of seeding sorrel, and short sweet grass 
 damasked all among with trefoil of wood- 
 sorrel, delicately green. The Haunted 
 Wood, with this its latest enchantment, is 
 pleasant, full of charm, and woos to waste 
 one's time there, whether at " brim of day " or 
 quiet eventide. All along on either side the 
 shadowy way the grass is spangled with blue 
 veronica. Veronica is such a devoted little 
 sun-lover ; even within the shade, it will 
 sometimes make shift to be blue and glad. 
 Blue with green is one of nature's com- 
 monest, loveliest contrasts ; but green should 
 always have the mastery, as in Anchusa semper- 
 virens, where the contrast is so exquisite of 
 54
 
 The Haunted Wood 
 
 green, alive with myriad tiny touches of 
 brilliant blue. So, too, with veronica when 
 dispersed among the grass : the green is as a 
 hundred to one with the number of the blue, 
 yet it is only the blue that attracts the eye. 
 
 On the western borders of the wood once 
 stood three old beech-trees ; only two remain. 
 They are weather-worn and under-sized as 
 compared with the great full-grown " mast- 
 bearing tree," as we know him in his prime ; 
 but as yet they are untouched by the axe, 
 unbroken by the storm. A tender young 
 growth of feathery birch is closing up so fast 
 around that soon the old trees will be held 
 of no account, swallowed up in an alien 
 crowd. Fate is against these two poor 
 beeches. The north has certainly undone 
 them, though not " with a sleety whistle 
 through them " ; it was only the north winds 
 of June, for the edges of their leaves are 
 curled and rusted only on the north side. 
 The clean-cut stump between the two, of 
 what was once a third, serves now for the 
 wayfarer's seat. Five tall, half-unbranched, 
 half-lifeless pines stand also there, in front 
 of the beech, as before a judgment-seat 
 arraigned, like five lost giants before the 
 woodland bar, to give account for their sorry 
 state. The naked stems stand upright, un- 
 clad, in shreds of rough grey lichen. Bare 
 55
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 limbs stretch heavenwards in seeming tragic, 
 vain appeal. Beyond them, in lines of perfect 
 beauty, the new-born forest melts into the 
 distance. 
 
 Light murmurs floating round among the 
 leaves seem to question the accused: "Where 
 are your friends ? Why are ye so alone ? " 
 But no accusation comes from " the chair 
 of judgment " ; no answer from those five 
 shattered thralls. Quite irrelevantly round 
 the poor, wind-scathed beeches themselves, 
 rustles on, a stave from the old ballad : 
 
 " 'Tis merry, 'tis merry in good greenwood, 
 Where mavis and merle are singing. . . ." 
 
 Sitting here under the beeches I forget the 
 grey Scotch firs standing so forlornly dumb, 
 and begin to remember a curious story the 
 poet and essayist Lowell used to tell of a 
 " Witch Farm " in America. The place is 
 a forest near New York, at some distance, 
 but within a walk from the city. On the 
 edge of the forest a farm will at times 
 appear, which no one remembers to have 
 ever seen before, unless they happen to be 
 among the few who have seen. There is no 
 one about the farm, no sound is heard, yet 
 there are signs of busy occupation. The 
 door is open, empty milk-pans lean against 
 the wall, newly-cleaned pails and dairy uten- 
 56
 
 The Haunted Wood 
 
 sils and butter-churns are set out to dry ; 
 clothes hang on the line in a little drying- 
 ground all looks as if the farmer's wife or 
 servant had but just gone indoors, or gone out 
 meaning to return in a few minutes. Whoever 
 thus chances on the farm seldom stops long to 
 look. He will pass on, thinking to himself: "I 
 don't seem to remember that farm. I must 
 inquire about it in town." In town not a soul 
 knows anything about it, and never will that 
 person see the farm again, however often he 
 may return to look for it. Then others will 
 go out to seek the Witch Farm. Over and 
 over again will they pass and repass the very 
 spot where it had been seen, retracing their 
 steps, and puzzling and saying : " It must be 
 there ; we have mistaken the way." They 
 are few, indeed, to whom the spectral farm 
 has shown itself. Lowell himself once saw 
 it. On the verge of the wood he passed a 
 homestead which appeared precisely as had 
 been described the milking-pails and dairy 
 things all about round the open door ; the 
 linen hanging out to dry on the clothes-line. 
 Mr. Lowell saw it all, and passed on without 
 thinking ; then suddenly stopped short with 
 a feeling of something strange, turned and 
 sauntered slowly back, in order to look again 
 at the place. But no house at all was there, 
 and he was unable to find again the exact 
 57
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 spot where it had been. He had seen the 
 Witch Farm. 
 
 In the Haunted Wood one never comes 
 upon a mystic homestead, yet well I know a 
 garden lies hid in its innermost shades. In 
 June the growing copse is wont to give out 
 its fragrance in the sunshine, and it happened 
 I was led to follow down a narrow, green 
 alley, sloping ruggedly to where some ruined 
 remnants of the older wood survive. A wide- 
 winged, silvery, pale-green moth floated on 
 before, till just where the thicket grew more 
 dense the large wings closed as it settled on 
 the under-side of a leaf, whilst I drew near 
 to get a clearer view of the lovely thing. 
 The maze of slender branchlets suddenly 
 parted in a little arch of mountain-ash, rich 
 in red, ripe berries though, indeed, their time 
 of ripening was not yet and, just beyond 
 the rowans, lay a garden. Woodland and 
 winding paths and pale-green moth were 
 not ; instead, an open lawn filled full of light 
 and colour. Above, the Eye of Heaven, 
 in a cloudless depth of light, shone down 
 upon a mist -walled garden. Countless 
 flowers, all dewy and shadowless, rejoicing 
 as flowers rejoice only when the day is young. 
 One step within that magic circle, one breath- 
 less glance, then the shimmering mist arose 
 and spread, and blotted out garden and sun- 
 58
 
 The Haunted Wood 
 
 shine and flowers. So swiftly did the vision 
 vanish, there was not time to note the exact 
 spot where it had been. There seemed to 
 be a glassy pool in the centre of the flowers, 
 and a streaming of blue to meet the pool ; 
 but whether the blue were running waters, or 
 a shoal of bright-winged birds at play, or 
 troops of azure butterflies fluttering down 
 to sip at the margin of the pool who can 
 say ? The vision passed away as quickly as 
 it came. And it is certain that the flowers 
 were " garden-flowers." There was nothing 
 of the inconstant look of wild-flowers; nothing 
 of the wild-flower aspect that none mistake. 
 The flowers I saw were chequered pink and 
 purple, most richly doubled and redoubled 
 in their pride. So the young copse once 
 more closed in on one side and the other of 
 the narrow, green way. . . . 
 
 Dreams are said to be " the interlude that 
 fancy makes " ; and that gay impictured 
 garden was but a visionary interlude. Yet 
 at once I fell to thinking out the plan of a 
 forest garden. The whole world is his who 
 plans. " The plan " may be of the wildest 
 and impossible to realise. Still it exists, if 
 in the mind it be drawn out. It is a reality, 
 more solid perhaps than anything that is 
 actually made real. To begin with, the 
 forest must be like "The Haunted Wood," 
 59
 
 The Peacock's Pleasatmce 
 
 and none other ; therefore, it must be in 
 Scotland. And if rarer and more sensitively 
 delicate plants are desired, such as would 
 naturally be unsuited to so wild a spot, then 
 must be found another sort of wood-garden 
 in some more genial clime. 
 
 Mine shall be a garden of iris, the flower 
 of poetry, the flower of the mystic three, the 
 flower of reticence. Rich in velvet colour, 
 beyond words to describe, it is yet, above all 
 others in the garden, the flower of silence. 
 The iris keeps counsel with herself. Her 
 close-swathed bud gives no promise, brags 
 not, tells no tales of loveliness to be. The 
 single, slender, erect stalk bears one flower, 
 whose sister bud awaits in patience the hour 
 when her turn also shall come. From under 
 the petalled tip, as soon as its day is over, 
 steals out a new beauty into bloom, while 
 the other fades and is not. When iris is 
 white, it is as the whiteness of moonlight 
 shining on the snow. And the time of her 
 blooming is in June and July. 
 
 This, then, shall be the flower of our 
 woodland garden English iris, Xiphioides, 
 and Spanish Xiphium, with infrequent 
 clumps between of the beautiful, broad- 
 leaved flag, or German iris. 
 
 60
 
 The Haunted Wood 
 
 XIPHIUM XIPHIOIDES 
 
 The plan of the garden planned that day 
 in the Haunted Wood is a shell or spiral. 
 After passing through a brown, dim grove of 
 great old trees, a little burn is crossed, and at 
 once we are in the midst of a dense young 
 growth of self-sown betula or birch. Then, 
 after following a wild, uncertain path, our iris- 
 spiral shall begin. A long, curving, close- 
 shorn grassy way, hewn out through the 
 thick of the underwood, curving spirally like 
 the shell of a snail, or, rather, like an ancient 
 ammonite. No design is lovelier than the 
 spiral ; none so primeval ! The selvedge or 
 edge along the outer side is enriched with 
 iris. This selvedge may be about eighteen 
 inches wide, and the green way six or eight 
 feet. And since English iris want coolness 
 about the feet, and either completely die 
 down in summer, or at best the narrow 
 leaves grow yellow, there must be an inter- 
 mingling of the finer and more delicately 
 made wild grasses. Or scattered seeds of low 
 growing summer flowers will keep up the 
 interest, and keep the border full of colour. 
 Spanish iris (Xiphium) differs scarcely from 
 the English, save only in the outline of her 
 lovely flower, which is even more exquisitely 
 61
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 refined and small. It also blooms earlier, 
 and for perfect growth must receive full sun- 
 light. Wherever the spiral curves most freely 
 catch the sun, there Xiphium should do 
 well ; not forgetting that always the bluest 
 are loveliest, and more true in colour to the 
 brilliant blue flashes of wild iris seen so often 
 by travellers in Spain between flowery borders 
 of the railroad. English iris, Xiphioides, 
 must, however, chiefly fill the border, and 
 thus the spiral will be long lengths of purple, 
 blue, and white all the way, with shining 
 breaks of golden yellow, or mottled grey, 
 or lavender, or silvery splashed with violet. 
 Then, as the winding track sweeps round, 
 its convolutions end at last in a small 
 clear pool. A single thread of water 
 rises glittering from the centre. The pool 
 should be full of fish, so that perhaps a 
 heron might be enticed to take his stand 
 there and keep solemn watch for hours 
 among the great, splendid Kaempferi, or 
 Japanese iris ; or a marble Naiad might 
 dream forever on the brink. One thing 
 must be noted ; it is this : the beauty of 
 English or Spanish iris is never enhanced by 
 undue crowding. They will, of themselves, 
 fill out in time. And the thrifty, thinly 
 furnished line, with sometimes four or five 
 together, sometimes only two, will prove 
 62
 
 The Haunted Wood 
 
 more full of charm and interest than a space 
 more thickly planted. 
 
 In how many gardens of the day is evident 
 an almost painful striving for effect ! To 
 achieve " masses of colour," " wonderful 
 effects," is a chief aim ; whilst the endless 
 lovely forms of individual leaf and flower 
 are unnoticed and unthought of. 
 
 Round the heron's pool or the Naiad's 
 haunt must be disposed a fringe of broad- 
 flowered Japanese iris. It blooms later than 
 the others, and thus when these are done will 
 come as a beautiful surprise ; and the colour, 
 magnificently purple, shall contrast grandly 
 with the taller Ochroleuca monnieri, standing 
 near in raiment of wrought gold. With our 
 joy in her presence, too often we forget that 
 the iris season is very brief. Before July the 
 feast is over, or will soon be over. Some 
 other flower must be ready to fill her place. 
 Blue nemophila streaming round might be 
 some consolation ; or streaks of crimson 
 linum, or some other bright attractive seed- 
 ling ; simply as lovely makeshifts for the 
 moment. . . . 
 
 Although the iris shell, so easily planned, 
 lives ever with us as a vision of beauty greatly 
 to be desired, there yet remains an abiding 
 consciousness of its visionary nature ; a feel- 
 ing that such a design, simple though it be, 
 63
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 could never be carried out, and that it must 
 always be a dream and nothing more. Yet 
 
 " With the dream foregone, foregone, 
 
 The deed foreborne for ever, 
 The worm regret will canker on, 
 And time will turn him never ! " 
 
 And as the beautiful iris spiral fades, another 
 garden, the same with a difference one 
 which might be found less hard to realise 
 is already planned in its stead. They, in 
 whose souls the Queen of Flowers reigns pre- 
 eminent, whose desire is ever to " the rose, 
 the rose," might devise for some English 
 woodland, in the heart of its deep hazel 
 copse, a spiral rose garden. A fair place of 
 well-clipped, green-leaf walls. Here would 
 be jutting capes of juniper or yew to give 
 variety, half hiding, half disclosing a new sur- 
 prise, something brilliant and unexpected at 
 every turn. A splendour of white cam- 
 panula grow joyfully in the narrow selvedge ; 
 or columbine, blue and orange and pink 
 crushed-strawberry colour each floret very 
 slender and innocent of any hint of double- 
 ness. Variety and loveliness unnumbered 
 shines all around their rose spiral. But the 
 rose the rose must be supreme. Here no 
 " rich-bosomed garden rose " may have leave 
 to live. Only such as Penzance briers of 
 64
 
 The Haunted Wood 
 
 many shades, and wandering Ayrshires, pink 
 roamer (Wichuriana] wildly spangled and 
 Ideale, if she do but consent to fling her 
 flower-laden streamers about the tangled 
 walls, with many another. Single or half- 
 double roses, named or nameless, crimson or 
 blush-pink or purest white, shall all be dear 
 to us. There is hardly a limit to the colours 
 of the roses winding round and round the 
 rose shell. Yet even of these not over many. 
 For our law is " ane few meyne " ; or, as one 
 might say, a few of sorts. Then two narrow 
 vistas may be carved somewhere through the 
 outmost leaf-walls, and paved with turquoise 
 of blue forget-me-not or pale gold of prim- 
 roses. Beyond, blue glimpses of a hill country 
 very far off, with clouds of rosiest willow 
 herb between. The last whorl of the rose 
 spiral is a green circle of turf. And on the 
 green stands a small, open, white temple, like 
 a little reminiscence of a Temple of Vesta. 
 On one side low-growing roses Bengal or 
 red Damascus surge up to the very base of 
 the slender, white shafts ; while opposite is 
 only the green turf between the temple and 
 a receding line of flowers. To follow on 
 alone along these wild-wood spirals of rose 
 or iris is to pursue some blissful mystery of 
 tranquil pleasure. . . . 
 
 Somewhere exists, or once existed, a pen- 
 65 E
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 and-ink drawing by Rossetti " How they 
 met themselves." Two lovers in the bright 
 bloom of youth and happiness, walking to- 
 gether in some wild ferny place, on a sudden 
 perceive themselves approaching. The youth 
 and the maiden start back appalled at the 
 haggard, sin-scored faces that met them thus, 
 prophetic of the future of their own simili- 
 tude in life's hereafter. Something like this 
 idea in the rough may be found in a manuscript 
 family house-book of over a hundred years 
 ago, along with recipes for rose-water, almond 
 cakes, &c., headed thus : "To make a Ghost 
 in a Garden Wilderness." And thus the 
 recipe begins: "Find some rather long-shaped, 
 damp-disfigured mirror, or other polished 
 lucid substance the worse condition of it 
 the better for your purpose. Fix the glasse 
 warily at a certain distance off the footpath 
 amidst of wild thicknesse of underwood and 
 weeds and leaves in such manner as half to 
 hide and half display it. Any person using 
 the footpath and chancing to turn his eyes that 
 way, sees as it were a Phantom ; not know- 
 ing that it is but a vain image of himself." 
 A childish conceit, one that must never find 
 room in our gardens of sedate delight ! 
 
 " Let us sit upon the ground and tell sad 
 stories of the death of kings," were the 
 words that seemed to come and go in the 
 66
 
 The Haunted Wood 
 
 mind's ear at one special spot near the 
 entering in of a bower-path, burrowed 
 through copse and scrub, not far from an 
 outmost corner of the wood. The threads 
 of memory are often far to find, and often 
 her roots are buried deep, so the secret of 
 the haunting reiterance long lay hidden. 
 One day it so happened that, entering the 
 embowering shade, suddenly I knew. And 
 the remembered sunshine of long ago, " when 
 all the world was young," again shone down 
 upon a tall house-roof, and four gilded vanes 
 flashed back the gleam. Four golden doves 
 turned east and west and north and south, 
 gently veering with the winds of summer. 
 All day in the blue of heaven they seemed 
 to hover above the roof. Through the storm 
 and the tempest their wings glowed fitfully ; 
 glowing even at dead of night, when the 
 whole house slept, in watch and ward of the 
 golden doves. Again there was a day when 
 all the world was young and summer shone 
 fair upon the roof; and our poet host, Lord 
 Lytton, led his friends along garden ways 
 hedged in with glistening laurel the pride 
 of the place to the water of Knebworth. 
 From the margin of the lake they marked 
 the long ripple and liquid shadows, and then 
 it was the poet lightly quoted : " Let's sit 
 upon the ground and tell sad stories of the 
 67
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 death of kings." And thus the gilded vanes 
 and little unimportant scene as the friends 
 sat down upon the grass by Knebworth lake, 
 come back years after, and the word spoken 
 so long ago is whispered to-day in innumer- 
 able foliage of the Haunted Wood but 
 how, or why, who knows ? Yet there is no 
 unfathomable mystery, for had not a packet 
 of old letters been only very lately opened 
 and read once more? after lying lost for 
 forty years ! And one was penned under the 
 roof of the golden doves. The ink may be 
 faded, but the thoughts are fresh as yesterday : 
 " I wonder whether anybody lives the life 
 he or she meant to live ; and sometimes 
 doubt whether the failure of felicity in this 
 life should not rebuke rather than encourage 
 our hopes of another. When a child spoils 
 his toy, you take it away from him. You 
 don't give him a better one to break. The 
 world that has been given us seems so much 
 more beautiful and fruitful of enjoyment 
 than the lives we live in it. Is the defect in 
 the individual or society ? I don't think it 
 true that birds of a feather flock together. 
 They only come across each other now and 
 then, and seldom keep long in company. 
 If the dull, wicked, and the selfish-hearted 
 are found in troops, it is only because their 
 number is so great that they cannot avoid 
 68
 
 The Haunted Wood 
 
 each other. They would if they could ; 
 preferring the society of brighter and gentler 
 natures, were it only for the pleasure of 
 tormenting them. I have slipped, however, 
 into a stream of talk, which, unlike other 
 streams, will certainly not grow either brighter 
 or gentler the further it runs on. R. L." * 
 And yet another letter, of about the same 
 date, written from the South of France, tells 
 of a forgotten Genius. Forgotten ? No, 
 that could not be ; but so long ago ! and 
 so much has been since ! The letter is not 
 very long. Here it is. 
 
 " CANNES, April 1867. 
 
 " MY DEAR R., Now, while my whole 
 heart is full of the enchantment and the 
 melody, I must sit down and write quick 
 to you, and tell you about it, and everything 
 else must wait. You know I had been in- 
 vited by Lady M. F to come to her villa 
 
 and hear Jenny Lind. The day came, and 
 though it might have been more prudent to 
 have stayed quiet at home, I went. The 
 room was full of people ; the invalid elite of 
 the place ; all ranged along both sides of the 
 drawing-room. There were the Lumsdens, 
 Mr. and Lady something Edwards, Fer- 
 
 * Robert Lytton. 
 69
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 gusons, Des Voeux, &c., &c. About seven- 
 teen or eighteen altogether; and I, being 
 still weak, and only lately come out of a 
 state of such miserable disquiet, I felt the 
 atmosphere dreadfully hot and suffocating, 
 and things appeared to me flat and ugly. 
 
 Lady T seemed under these conditions 
 
 to be the most melancholy person I had ever 
 seen in my life ! Poor sick thing ! The 
 Edwards' looked haggard and worn, sharing 
 a glass of barley-water between them. Old 
 Sands I perceived to have one leg certainly 
 
 shorter than the other. Old Lady P 
 
 looked vacant, and her pretty daughter quite 
 plain. Somebody else squinted frightfully, 
 and my eye was caught by the hideous grey 
 boots worn by another lady. Some one else 
 showed me a badly painted amateur minia- 
 ture, and looked huffed when I refused to 
 rave about it. Mr. Harte, when I un- 
 fortunately asked about his illuminations, 
 handed me an ugly old portefeuille filled with 
 old patterns and faded photographs, and 
 page after page did he turn for me to 
 admire, each one innocent of all beauty or 
 
 originality. Lady T coughed and 
 
 murmured on about how she had never 
 moved since November and was ' sick to 
 death of the place,' and how several dear 
 friends were in a very bad way, Sec., &c. 
 70
 
 The Haunted Wood 
 
 Then the tea was strong, and the flowers 
 few and passees. And in the midst of all 
 this Jenny Lind slipt into the room (with- 
 out a bonnet), and I thought to myself, 
 ' Oh, what a cross-looking ordinary person 
 you are ! ' Her dress was, however, lovely. 
 A simple pale silk trimmed with bright 
 blue. But oh, the cross face above it ! 
 
 Poor M had much ado to bring her 
 
 round. She sat down beside her, and 
 devoted herself, and smoothed and softened. 
 ' Why, you told me two or three people ! 
 And here's the whole of collected ! ' 
 
 ' Only the invalids, I assure you,' M 
 
 sweetly rejoined, ' and those who were not 
 at the concert.' 'There's the Rolfes. I 
 saw them there ! ' ' Oh, but they are so 
 fond of music ! ' And so she soothed and 
 quieted, till at last the Nightingale was on 
 the music-stool, and then she put her hand 
 
 on M 's and said, * I never would have 
 
 done it for anyone else ! ' 
 
 "Then she began. . . . She sang Non mi 
 credei. She sang it so beautifully, she 
 could not have done it better in a London 
 concert - room. She scarcely opened her 
 mouth, and almost you could not tell 
 whence came the tones of such marvellous 
 beauty. 
 
 " As she sang gradually, by degrees the
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 lines of her face softened. The brow 
 smoothed, while a fulness and a tenderness 
 of the whole expression shone out of every 
 feature, rounding it, as it were, and turning 
 its very hardness into a strength of sweet- 
 ness, if you know what I mean. 
 
 " She ended, and people fidgeted and whis- 
 pered together. ' How lovely ! ' they said. 
 But easily could I divine the unsatisfied sort 
 of wholly unsympathetic feeling the whole 
 thing must have been to her. She sang 
 again : ' The Three Ravens,' from Percy's 
 Reliques. I am sorry I could not quite hear 
 the words, owing to her slight foreign accent. 
 It is an ancient ballad of Love and Death, 
 and Misery, I believe ending, * there never 
 was such hound and hawk and friend.' A 
 wild little refrain ends each verse. Then 
 some one asked for 'John Anderson.' I 
 assure you her face was beautiful, as she 
 smiled and made a little shake of her head. 
 * John Anderson, my jo . . .' No music ; 
 only, with the very last syllable, a gentle 
 chord. As for me, all my mind was full of 
 her own Swedish songs I had heard of in old 
 days, ' so plaintive, wild and uncommon : 
 the words so pretty and so fanciful and fairy- 
 like,' and among them one of the only ones 
 I know, ' Love smiles no more.' (You have 
 
 the music of it.) So I tried to make M 
 
 72
 
 The Haunted Wood 
 
 know which I meant, and even hummed 
 the air, which she cleverly caught at once 
 and carried to Madame Lind. But no ; she 
 would not understand. She was just a little 
 snubby, I thought ! ' But supposing I never 
 sang it, I can't remember it ! ' However, 
 all the people then wanted a Swedish song. 
 So down she sat once more, and began a 
 wild strange prelude, almost like a Swiss 
 jodel, then softly subsiding into the pretty 
 melody you know, the one we all love. 
 Oh, how delighted I was! She sang with 
 all her whole heart, the last two notes pro- 
 longed into a humming kind of whisper, 
 then swelling out into a long and most 
 lovely fulness 
 
 " ' Birds on the branches 
 
 Still their soft lays sing, 
 Flowers on the green boughs 
 Sweetly breathe of Spring ; 
 But to me is changed and sad 
 All that once could make me glad, 
 Ever musing, still refusing 
 Thought of all but thee.' 
 
 "And this ended the concert. And she 
 had become quite herself, cheery and pleasant. 
 And she and I had a nice chat about art and 
 about that Norwegian painter whose name I 
 always forget, and of Swedish sunsets, which 
 my sister had described to me. And then 
 
 the T 's came up and I left her. 
 
 73
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 " There was a tremendous commotion 
 outside, and everybody ran to the windows 
 to look. It was our carriage. The cocker 
 (who was mad or merry I think), had run 
 the wheel first on one gate-post stone, then, 
 when heaved off that, on to t'other. We 
 got safely off in time. Old Lady P : 
 said, ' Oh, I thought you had gone away 
 long ago ! ' She certainly is a little funny ! 
 
 " And that is all I can tell you of this little 
 piece of a day in my life, which to me was a 
 thing so enchanting I shall remember it for- 
 ever. What I've said can give you no idea 
 of the wonderful pleasure it was, listening to 
 Jenny Lind. And then the knowledge that 
 this was that world-famed creature one had 
 heard of and longed to see, for over twenty 
 years ! I was able to say to her just one 
 little word at parting : only that ' I never 
 should forget.' And we made a cordial 
 grasp of the hands and felt good friends. . . . 
 
 " (Our cocker was certainly drunk, but we 
 got home, full gallop all the way.) I have 
 not suffered from my escapade, and am 
 even feeling stronger this morning. Yours 
 always, E. V. B." 
 
 " When the daughter of the Voice is silent, 
 Lo, the son of the Ink speaks." 
 
 Persian saying. 
 
 74
 
 The Haunted Wood 
 
 Long years before the date of that letter 
 from the French chalet, Jenny Lind had 
 been to me as a vision, as the revelation of 
 a dream. My elder sister had stayed for a 
 year or two in Stockholm with a brother, 
 who was at that time Secretary of Legation 
 under Sir Thomas Cartwright. She used 
 frequently to write home about Jenny Lind, 
 describing her and the Swedish songs she 
 sang, "so plaintive, wild and uncommon: 
 the words so pretty and so fanciful and 
 fairy-like." Jenny had just made her first 
 appearance at Court, and became at once a 
 favourite. The letters told of her charm, 
 her voice. I was not eighteen at that time, 
 and these letters stirred the heart and in- 
 spired an immense enthusiasm. When my 
 sister returned to us from Sweden, she 
 brought with her, I remember, packed in 
 one of those little chip boxes, once common 
 enough but now seldom seen, a sort of tiny, 
 tin Court toy. There were the King and 
 Queen of Sweden, sitting in two state arm- 
 chairs, six rather dowdy maids of honour 
 and ladies of the Court, some tall officers 
 in uniform and the clergyman in his black 
 gown, with several little models of empty 
 tin chairs with shiny crimson seats. All 
 these were supposed to be arranged in a 
 circle, while in the centre stood the figure of 
 75
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 a young girl in white, with a wreath of pink 
 roses on her head, and holding up a fan. 
 This was Jenny Lind singing for the first 
 time before royalty. 
 
 Since that distant " long ago " two genera- 
 tions have played their little games with my 
 box of tin chairs and courtiers, their Swedish 
 Majesties, and the great singer, and now it 
 has passed away among other bygone play- 
 things ; and passed away are the courtiers and 
 maids of honour and stately dames, passed 
 with the spell of the wonderful voice. 
 
 Gone also are the letters that seemed 
 so illuminated with praise of the youthful 
 "Jenny." And afterwards, when she had 
 come to England and made her dlbut in 
 London, and when the world went mad 
 about the "Swedish Nightingale," I was 
 settled far down in the country, out of the 
 way of all these things. I never had the 
 joy to hear her until that one magic hour at 
 Cannes, and never after. 
 
 Sir William Boxall (at that time Director 
 of the National Gallery) was a very old 
 friend of ours, and in the summer often 
 used to journey down to Somerset to stay 
 with us to paint, and be refreshed with 
 the deep quiet of our green country. And 
 often in those days he would talk of his 
 favourite "Jenny Lind," and would try to 
 76
 
 The Haunted Wood 
 
 describe the artless grace of her bearing, her 
 gestures, her little frequent, unstudied action, 
 which as an artist he never tired of watch- 
 ing with delight. There was one especial 
 " pose " that seemed to come to her the 
 oftenest, and quite naturally as she sang. 
 Our friend would do his best to tell of 
 that attitude, so that we might imagine 
 something of the charm of it. She would, 
 he said, stand with her head a little on one 
 side, resting the chin in her left hand, her 
 right placed in the left palm. Impossible to 
 be written down so as to make it understood. 
 Do any now survive, in the mind's eye of 
 whose memory yet lives the image of jenny 
 Lind as she was in those departed years ? 
 
 The old ideals fade. Time steals them 
 from us ; the darkness of death receives 
 them. 
 
 In art, whether of painting or of song, 
 for many of us belonging to a distant past 
 all is now so different, so changed that, as it 
 were, we scarcely seem to know our way, 
 passing through the modern picture galleries 
 or listening in concert-halls. Some of us 
 think now, with undying regret, of " the 
 Hand " of masters who loved and followed 
 Nature, and who felt so well with their clear 
 vision how to portray the hidden soul of her 
 of the unforgotten grace and sweetness 
 77
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 of the vocalist who, so many years agone, 
 charmed the world with " the sound of a 
 voice that is still." 
 
 At noon the Haunted Wood lay bare its 
 charm to the golden prime of an August 
 day. The myriad-leafed underwood, flecked 
 with too early yellow, veiled as in a light 
 mirage the full glory of the sun. Rushes 
 and sedge, and moss low-lying on the earth, 
 had drunk so deep of sunshine that stalks 
 and leaves burned green as though illumined 
 with an inner fire of life. Sitting in an 
 alcove of wild raspberries, reddening in their 
 own shade of white-lined leaves, and smell- 
 ing already of raspberry jam the silence 
 and the sunshine and the ripe fruit called 
 back to mind a certain dear old house of 
 former days. Up the long passages, in 
 those old hot Julys, fragrant whiffs of rasp- 
 berry jam from the kitchen would some- 
 times steal right into the'wainscotted parlour. 
 Mingling with the smell of sun-warmed 
 fruit thrilled a sense of something sweeter 
 far. An aroma as of white jasmine with 
 ten thousand wild flowers of the woods, the 
 rarest fragrance of the sweetest flower, dear 
 memory's keenest stimulant, the marsh- 
 loving butterfly orchis, came wafted from 
 some secret corner of the wild. Yet hardly 
 like the dreamy fragrance of an orchis, it 
 78
 
 The Haunted Wood 
 
 was but a suggested fragrance a momentary 
 thought-scent such as bracken in the rain 
 gives out, wafted from some woodland far 
 away. A scent that made the faces of long- 
 lost friends shine out of dim mists of other 
 days, and the sound of their voices seem 
 nigh at hand. . . . Once more we had met 
 (in the rain) at the thatched hut the scene 
 of many a happy meeting among the firs 
 on St. George's Hill, long years ago. The 
 hut looked down a steep ferny slope, green 
 just then with the glory of midsummer, 
 sparkling with midsummer rain. There 
 were Adelaide Sartoris, and Browning, and 
 Leighton, and Mrs. Brookfield, with her 
 fair-haired Magdalen, and others ; and it 
 was Adelaide led the laughter and the talk. 
 And then she sang a song she loved " The 
 Music of the Sea" and then she read 
 aloud. William Morris had not at that 
 time very long begun to publish; and his 
 style was hardly understood. It was one of 
 his slighter poems that was read aloud that 
 day, in Adelaide's usual dramatic manner. 
 The refrain of " Two Red Roses across the 
 Moon," was given with a look and intonation 
 irresistibly funny. And then Browning told 
 story after story. Only one of his stories, 
 trivial as it is, survives after all these years ! 
 It was about the deaf old lady's tea-party 
 79
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 after a visit to the Zoo. A shy young man 
 next her had to say something into her 
 trumpet. So he said, " Did you see the 
 elephant?" "Did I see what?" "The 
 elephant!" "What?" He tried a little 
 louder: "The elephant!" "Oh, the tea- 
 pot!" "No, the elephant!" "The tea- 
 pot!" "The elephant! ! ! " he shrieked. 
 " The tea-pot ? " And so it went on amid 
 a dead pause round the tea-table, till the 
 miserable youth jumped up and fled the 
 scene. It was the way Browning had of 
 telling a thing that told and roused the 
 merriment ringing from our hut. And so 
 ran on the .stories and the mirth, till the 
 rain had ceased and the sun broke out, and 
 all the party went out and followed Mrs. 
 Sartoris, while she and Leighton plunged 
 down into the sea of fern in youth who 
 cares for wet or dry ? And all the company 
 followed and got wet through, and sought 
 the winding homeward paths, and went their 
 ways back to London ; and the well-known 
 voices died away. It is the moment to 
 put on the ring of secret thought, when I 
 remember : 
 
 " All the friends so knit together, 
 I've seen around me fall like leaves in wintry weather ; " 
 
 to forget the sun-lit shades and sweet wood- 
 So
 
 The Haunted Wood 
 
 land sounds : to know that " the only thing 
 in life worth thinking about is death." 
 
 Not in the Haunted Wood it is too 
 freshly new. Not in the little fir-wood, 
 still in its first fragrant youth. Not there, 
 but in some old secluded forest track, sacred 
 perchance to a great brotherhood of im- 
 memorial oak ; or in lonely places murmur- 
 ous with music of " the voiceful pine," 
 where beneath the trees the grass grows 
 smooth and shivers in the wind. There, 
 when long shafts of sunset steal between the 
 trees, and birds are silent, in such an hour, 
 to the inner mind of one who muses there 
 it may be " musing upon the days of his 
 youth, the glad days and the solemn days " 
 at times will come the sense of some 
 strange spirit crisis, and to him the Present 
 will seem to fail and fall away, while the 
 Past comes back intensely near, lying rolled 
 together, as it were, in a little heap that the 
 hand might gather up. Within the compass 
 of the forest glade, such an one at such a 
 time will know the agony of a mysterious 
 influence, the supreme influence of Nature 
 when we are alone with her. Like a dream 
 it holds us, drawing to us from the hard 
 substance of the trees, from rough oak or 
 smooth-rinded beech. In such an hour the 
 soul will seem to come close to the very 
 81 F
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 outmost gates of being ; so close, it feels 
 their touch shrinking back from the chill 
 prison of mortality. Hope, love, death, are 
 not ; only a burning to be free, so the soul 
 might release herself from mortal sense. 
 The solemn trees stand round calm, im- 
 mutable, as for ages they have stood, types 
 of the inexorable. What are we to them, 
 with all our perishing human love and hate ? 
 born to die, while they grow on for ever, 
 calmly growing to decay, self-involved in a 
 grand, profound indifference ! 
 
 Slow, slow, the red-gold sunset illumes 
 each leaf-crowned head, till the sullen passive 
 strength of the great trees seems to pass into 
 a smile ; until, looking upward through 
 green ranks of branch and leaf, there shines 
 at last a little space of tenderest blue above, 
 immeasurably far. 
 
 82
 
 V 
 
 A White Earwig 
 
 Even these, the humble little ones of the earth, 
 though they suffer, yet are they also holden in 
 the Hand of God.
 
 A White Earwig 
 
 THE rain hardly ever ceased during 
 all July and August. The corn 
 was still quite green, the fields were 
 marshes, and the roads were mud, 
 and the garden borders sodden with wet. 
 When sometimes the clouds would break 
 for a little space and the sun shot down 
 a bright glance upon the trees, the wet 
 leaves trembled in the breeze and shook 
 with diamonds. It was a dismal afternoon, 
 the sky black and lowering, the road to 
 the village deep in mud. Under a line of 
 beech along the first part of the road it 
 should have been less wet and muddy, but 
 that day, and for days before, nothing was 
 dry. Dryness had become an unknown 
 word. 
 
 Along a slippery, narrow cart-rut some- 
 thing very small and quite white a little 
 white shape glided slowly, hesitatingly, at 
 our feet. The brown wet mud enwalled 
 the little thing on either side. It was so 
 very small that one marvels how any should 
 85
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 have observed or stooped down to scrutinise 
 more closely. Living things sometimes 
 seem to project a kind of semblance to 
 the mind through the eye that sees them 
 from far off; so that although the exact 
 form may scarcely by reason of its distance 
 or smallness be quite clearly seen, the mind 
 decides for itself in a flash what manner 
 of being the creature is. Thus, although 
 no feature of the slender minuteness in our 
 path might be discerned at once, we knew 
 at once it was an earwig. A small, though 
 full-grown, milk-white earwig. Why was it 
 white ? I bent down to look more closely. 
 It was like a delicate ivory carving : milk- 
 white, from the eyes to the daintily forked 
 tail. The great, beautiful, laced wings 
 were somehow rumpled about the shoulders. 
 The creature looked like a bride gathering 
 up her veil in haste. For a minute I 
 watched the poor little white figure feebly 
 making her way along the muddy cart- 
 wheel rut. Some definite end she had in 
 view ; some inner, well-defined purpose im- 
 pelled her to quit the safe shelter of her 
 dark crevice in the rugged bark of an oak- 
 tree, leagues away, as distance counts in such 
 a microscopic world, and brave the dangers 
 of that rain-soaked track. Wherever the 
 goal of her wandering, the little milk-white 
 86
 
 A White Earwig 
 
 bride was never to attain it ; for a blow 
 from one of my companions came suddenly 
 down upon her. I saw it coming, sudden 
 though the action was, and yet, not having 
 presence of mind at the moment, I was 
 silent. So in the night, and the next day, 
 and the next, the vision of the little crushed 
 white life haunted one of us. Not, indeed, 
 the one who did it, but the one who had 
 failed to avert the blow ; had given consent, 
 as it were, by silence. And so the little, 
 breathing, perchance God-guided living 
 creature became a nothing, a mere white 
 smudge in the mire. I need feel no shame 
 for my remorse, or for the momentary 
 weakness. And after all, size is only rela- 
 tive. The injustice is the same ; whether 
 it be the shooting for sport of elephants 
 and big harmless beasts in the wilds of 
 India or Africa, or the slaying of a tiny, 
 white earwig-elf. Though for such " mord " 
 as, anciently, murder was written there 
 may be perhaps acquit. For acquittance 
 may rest in the feeling too common with 
 us all, the feeling of unconquerable anti- 
 pathy. That strange, natural antipathy to 
 creeping things that is born with us. And 
 allied with it is the impulse to destroy 
 that which the soul abhors. No question 
 of " Live and let live " ; the impulse is 
 87
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 for Death. So, for all her garb of innocence 
 she wore, the little creeping thing must die. 
 And so, also, it happened to a lady- 
 bird, of uncommon size and depth of colour, 
 swept in by the wind through the window 
 on to the floor of a railway carriage, in 
 which I was travelling once, years ago. 
 Ladybirds bring good luck, and they save 
 many a rose-bush from the blight of green- 
 fly. For a minute I gazed with joy on 
 the motley scarlet globe at my feet. Then 
 some one got up from his seat and stept 
 across from right the other side of the 
 compartment to admire also as I quite 
 believed. Ah, no ! The thought of his 
 heart was death. And a heavy boot was 
 at once set sternly down on that painted 
 scrap of insect beneficence. After all 
 these years, I still seem distinctly to hear 
 the crunch ! Was it merely a rude man's 
 natural instinct to kill, or was it the in- 
 born aversion to things that creep, even 
 though so innocent and so handsome ? Its 
 sole crime, being made with six legs ; and 
 yet they were so well concealed underneath 
 deep eaves of such a gaily jetted buckler ! 
 Certain it is, whosoever may in the end deal 
 the death-blow, there is a day of destiny 
 for each created thing for the small and 
 for the great.
 
 A White Earwig 
 
 For the small white creature or the 
 scarlet beetle ; for both, the sun of their 
 little day had set. The dial had touched 
 the hour and they were not. To the 
 rose in the bloom of her beauty, on a day 
 comes a whisper among the leaves, in the 
 stillness of noon ; and a rose-leaf drops 
 down to the earth. Her day is done. 
 For man in his strength the unseen shadow 
 waits by the wayside. Another step, and 
 he is gathered into gloom. 
 
 Is it not an uncomfortable, almost a 
 sorrowful thought, to feel the utter estrange- 
 ment that exists between ourselves and the 
 infinitely little who surround us on every 
 side? Not tiresome or hurtful things like 
 the midge or the sleepy house-fly : I am 
 thinking of others that are entirely innocent 
 of harm, and in their utter helplessness are 
 often brushed aside or killed because they 
 happen to be in our way, and never a 
 thought or regret is felt for the destroying 
 of structures of such marvellous minuteness, 
 such exquisite delicacy. 
 
 Years agone, I remember one summer 
 day I was busy writing near a window ; 
 the bright sunlight flooded the table and 
 portfolio where I was at work. Suddenly 
 I became aware of the presence of the 
 strangest little party of extraordinarily tiny 
 89
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 so-called mites. They slid in and out from 
 underneath the writing-paper, and played 
 about in giddy rounds. Their heads were 
 abnormally large and round and flat ; so 
 big ' as half a pin's head about the size 
 of a baby fairy's dessert-plate ! (the large 
 size in proportion to the body of an insect's 
 head is remarked to be often a sign of good 
 nature, while a small one indicates the re- 
 verse). So these little beings of the great 
 heads gave one an impression of the most 
 good-natured in all creation ! In and out 
 and about they ran and played. They were 
 quite harmless, and not very ugly for 
 the sort of thing. Every one would have 
 been ruthlessly destroyed if caught. When 
 I shook the paper they ceased their play, 
 raced off and disappeared. One, however, 
 lay low : it remained quite still. Hard 
 to make this quiet one the victim ! but so 
 it was. A moment's pause for pity, and 
 its little treasure, Life, had been spared. 
 Alas, too late ! The deed was done. (Can 
 anything on God's earth ever be undone?) 
 Now and then afterwards, I confess, I 
 thought of that tiny round-head : of a 
 merry life, though small, so suddenly put 
 an end to. And it may have cost me 
 the ghost of a sigh ! Did the thought 
 teach pitifulness? It might be so. Yet 
 90
 
 A White Earwig 
 
 admonitions often have to knock hard before 
 we listen. 
 
 Once on a time, one damp dark winter 
 morning, there appeared waiting at my 
 window as I opened it, a certain misshapen, 
 evil-looking, sad-coloured creeping thing. 
 By the instant movement of his hundred legs 
 I divined his clear intention of crossing over 
 the wet window-sill and entering the house. 
 The intention was frustrated : and the 
 centipede no more seen. Since an English 
 centipede, I believe, has never been known 
 to bite, it is but its loathsome appearance 
 that weighs so heavily against it, and for 
 which its life must pay forfeit. 
 
 If, as has been said, beauty is God's 
 charity, it is sad to reflect how innumer- 
 ably the precious gift is denied ; and how, 
 when at the outset denied, this especial 
 jewel, dearer, and of greater moment it may 
 be to the possessor than all else beside, 
 is from generation to generation after, for 
 all time withheld. . . . The sad-coloured, 
 creeping, ill-favoured creature, scorned and 
 viewed with horror, was forbid, and entered 
 not my house. It was seen no more. Yet 
 did something more ugly and far larger 
 come silently in that morning. Grief, un- 
 bidden, came and sat down with us in the 
 house, and stayed for many a long day after. 
 91
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 Some, I suppose, might think they dis- 
 cerned a meaning in the matter. They 
 would say " It had to be one or the other ; 
 One or the Other had to enter. Fate willed 
 the Other. An unwelcome ugliness, dis- 
 pleasing, or even, it may be, repulsive, enters 
 your life. Bear with it, for the millionth 
 chance that its presence fills the place of 
 some unknown and far worse evil. There 
 has to be One or the Other. Make your 
 own choice ; but in the end, know that Fate 
 alone wills which it is to be. The thing we 
 call Fate, perfect and beautiful according 
 to whose ordinations all beings advance to 
 their beatitude" or otherwise. I believe 
 not much in Fate. Yet, at the back of my 
 mind, I know that still there lies concealed 
 a vague regret, and I feel that I selfishly 
 regret the ending of that centipede ! Did 
 ever creature so gruesomely made arouse a 
 sentiment as gentle ? 
 
 Returning again for a moment to the day 
 of small things, of Nature's delicate master- 
 pieces. We know almost nothing about 
 them in any way, and it is better not to try 
 to humour them when we come across them, 
 or help them in their struggle to get on in 
 life. We sometimes make mistakes. . . . 
 
 In our little flower-border, close against a 
 south window, grew one of those coarse, 
 92
 
 A White Earwig 
 
 dull, lilac poppies that no one much likes. 
 It was tall and lusty ; had grown up in the 
 strongest, rudest health with blue-green 
 leaves, and any number of big, bouncing 
 seed-balls, vigorously ripening under the 
 July sun ; for the flowering of it was over. 
 Just behind this lilac poppy, from an 
 invisible chink in the stone window-sill, 
 quivering at the breath of every lightest 
 zephyr that stole round the corner of the 
 house, dwelt the poppy's little daughter. 
 Such a poor little, frail, yellow, dried-up 
 thing ! only about five inches high. She 
 had had a hard struggle all her life merely 
 to exist. Yet real lilac poppies, minute, yet 
 true to type, had been flowered on that tiny 
 little stem, in colour and form quite like the 
 old poppy, only smaller in size, scarcely so 
 large as a shilling-piece. I had watched the 
 blooming of three little poppies within two 
 weeks' time. They differed from the parent 
 flowers in one way, for their pale fragile 
 petals seldom lasted through the day, but 
 feebly fluttered down till each small seed- 
 vessel in turn stood bare. There were but 
 two topmost green leaves showing even the 
 faintest tinge of green. The few remaining 
 lower down had long since faded into 
 yellow, like the slender straw which was the 
 stalk. Then, one bright summer morning, 
 93
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 the Great Poppy came to a sudden end. It 
 was Saturday ; and the old plant with all its 
 ripe, stiff rounds of seed with the bloom 
 on them was pulled up and thrown into the 
 wheelbarrow and carried away with dead 
 roses, weeds, and seeding snapdragons. The 
 airy shadows of blue-green leaves that gave 
 shelter all through those burning months of 
 June and July no longer helped to cool the 
 air around the south window. Leaves and 
 shadow, both were gone. And from that 
 day a change came over the little Poppy 
 in the stone. The pure, faint green, faded 
 quite from her two best leaves ; strange 
 shivers trembled through the dry stalk 
 whenever the hot south blew. The mother- 
 ing poppy's shadow had failed when the 
 need was sorest. Still, once more, yet 
 another little blossom took heart and spread 
 abroad some sad, pale lilac. And I thought 
 to myself, "shade and moisture are badly 
 wanted." So a fine pebble was picked up 
 from the gravel walk and placed near the 
 poppy's root, if root might be, down there 
 within the stone window-sill. And a cupful 
 of cold water was poured over it ; awkwardly 
 enough, indeed, for the stream scattered that 
 poor last floweret. "To-morrow," I said, 
 " you will be all right, you dear little 
 poppy ! " But neither to-morrow nor next 
 94
 
 A White Earwig 
 
 day, nor ever again did it come all right. 
 Days passed, and hour by hour the leaves 
 lost all their green. Thinner and older grew 
 the yellowing stock. And soon the small 
 thing that had seemed far too small for 
 great death to heed was dead. It had 
 been better let alone even by the wisest 
 while it yet strove to live. 
 
 The sun shone gloriously in at the south 
 window, and the muslin curtain was drawn 
 to keep him out. And early in the morning 
 the women had been about their work, and 
 had cleared away a poor, dry, meagre shred 
 all that remained of an existence self- 
 contained and patient, albeit wondrously in- 
 significant. And they scrubbed and cleaned 
 and whitened the stone window-sill, until no 
 one ever could have believed anything ever 
 had flowered there. Even the three little 
 seed-cases so long, so painfully upborne 
 against the day of ripening fell and perished 
 likewise. 
 
 Judge not too scornfully, wise reader, if 
 even amid the stress and wear of life, one 
 may sometimes love to stoop down, 
 
 " To see a world in a grain of sand 
 And heaven in a wild flower." 
 
 95
 
 VI 
 An (Almost] Ideal City 
 
 Labour not to be rich : cease from thine own 
 wisdom.
 
 VI 
 
 An (Almost} Ideal City 
 
 BESIDE the Mediterranean Sea close 
 under the Maritime Alps, on a sandy 
 ridge, the town is built. The slope 
 below it is rich with olive and pine 
 wood, and with a luxuriant undergrowth 
 of aromatic cistus, wild juniper and myrtle. 
 From the sandy cliff on the left, you look 
 down upon the bay with its blue waters and 
 bright circling shore, and on the other side, 
 across the valley to a wide range of beautiful 
 hills clothed from their very summit down- 
 wards with the sea-pines of that country, or 
 with intermingling masses of silvery grey 
 olive, which lower down meet the fertile 
 plain. There is also amid the olives many 
 a little white- walled city rising above the 
 trees and shining white in the dazzling sun- 
 light. Each little town has its high cupola 
 or church tower, which dominates the grey 
 roofs, and is clearly seen from far off in the 
 distance. 
 
 If at mid-day you follow the dusty high- 
 road, or take your way by pleasantly shaded 
 99
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 mule-paths up to the entering in of one of 
 these hillside woodland towns, you will walk 
 through dim and narrow streets, where sleepy 
 faces look down from the high upper windows 
 as you pass. And few are the sounds will 
 meet your ear except the murmur of running 
 waters and plash of fountains, or the hum 
 of voices, where knots of women gather with 
 their distaffs and iron coffee-roasters to gossip 
 around their neighbours' doors till you come 
 to the little market-place. There old men 
 sit on stone benches under the great town 
 plane-tree. There they meet, day after day, 
 smoking their pipes and grumbling out old 
 tales of long ago, while at their feet lie 
 stretched their old dogs, lazily sleeping in 
 the sun. There is an abiding sense of sleep 
 over all the place ; for the younger men are 
 away at work with their donkeys, in the fields 
 or among the olives, and the children are 
 busy over their books at school ; and there is 
 nothing to see, nothing to hear, and nothing 
 to do, in the little hill town. 
 
 Quite close to the villa where I live, near 
 the borders of its garden-land, are situated 
 other cities of a character altogether dif- 
 ferent. In these you see from afar, no 
 gleaming of white house-walls, as in those on 
 the distant hillsides ; in the streets shines no 
 ray of sunlight, for the so-called "streets" 
 
 100
 
 IN PRIDE. "POWDERED WITH STARS "
 
 An (Almost) Ideal City 
 
 are only dark covered ways. And on the 
 gloom within, as well as upon the ramparts, 
 silence, night and day, forever reigns un- 
 broken and profound. Yet if you approach 
 the outskirts of one of these cities you will 
 find that the streets are full to overflowing 
 of busy life, and the silent, tumultuous, 
 excitement of a vast population all absorbed 
 in the same occupation, the same work of 
 some apparently immense interest which 
 admits of no repose, no pause for idle talk. 
 From the largest and most important of 
 these sunless towns, there have at intervals 
 gone forth colonies which now within a 
 certain radius form a long line of villages 
 and smaller cities. The mother town is built 
 upon a rocky eminence facing south, and over- 
 looking an arid, stony plain, sheltered at the 
 back by the all-prevailing olive groves. The 
 style of architecture is, to our eyes, both 
 strange and uncouth. The buildings so 
 far as we understand them almost shape- 
 less, and guiltless of any kind of architecture 
 or regular design. Yet that some kind of 
 design does certainly exist can scarcely be 
 doubted, could we but give time and patience 
 for more careful and minute investigation and 
 study of the whole plan with all its details. 
 The general appearance of the buildings, it 
 must, however, be confessed, is simply an 
 
 101
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 irregular mass of rounded or broken outline, 
 built of clay and granite rudely cemented 
 together. Windows there are none ; only 
 low, arched openings leading into long, in- 
 tricate and night-black passages. One thing 
 I have observed with wonder, namely, whereas 
 great public works appear always to be in 
 progress, there is no Master Builder, nor 
 have I ever seen or known of the presence 
 of any Clerk of the Works. Yet amongst 
 the many hundreds of labourers there is 
 never any sign of confusion, nor of the 
 least misunderstanding. 
 
 The inhabitants of this City are in stature 
 a very little people. Yet are they great, 
 by reason of the greatness of their moral 
 qualities. Their chiefest characteristics, and 
 those for which they are noted among the 
 nations, are four : Courage, Patriotism, un- 
 wearying Perseverance, united to an almost 
 superhuman Endurance. 
 
 They are also a very ancient race. The 
 existence of this strange nation dates further 
 back than so-called prehistoric ages. And 
 it is the people to whom in Holy Scripture 
 the Wise King points, as an example to his 
 fellow-men of self-forgetting diligence. 
 
 From other great towns this one which 
 we are now considering differs much, for 
 amongst ten thousands of citizens there is 
 
 102
 
 An (Almost) Ideal City 
 
 not found one idle or one disreputable 
 character. The citizens in the aggregate 
 are like a family, every member of which is 
 animated by the same feeling, i.e. an intense 
 care and anxiety for the common good. 
 Should this lead them as no doubt at times 
 it may to acts of individual cruelty and 
 hardness, the universal patriotism burning 
 within the breast of each is more con- 
 tinuously displayed in devotion and self- 
 sacrifice. I cannot deny, however, that if 
 one of the community fall ill, or if he 
 happen to suffer from wounds inflicted by 
 an enemy, or is maimed in any manner, he 
 must hope for no shadow of tenderness 
 from his brethren who are whole. They 
 drag him away through the town, and he is 
 mercilessly slain as a useless member of the 
 community, and his body cast outside the 
 walls. 
 
 Neither does the city show respect for the 
 Dead. 
 
 When a citizen dies, whether he were one 
 of the most heroic, or the best or the strongest 
 and most energetic amongst them, there is 
 no fuss made ; the corpse is not suffered to 
 cumber the place for a single moment. It is 
 either carried aside and flung down without 
 the walls, or is at once built up into their 
 substance. Surely these few defects this 
 103
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 cold stony - heartedness are mere trifles 
 compared with a thousand higher qualities ! 
 
 Long ere sunrise the whole city is astir. 
 There are no shops to open nor fires to light, 
 so the populace rise and pour forth immedi- 
 ately without the waste of a moment of time, 
 and hasten to their work on the boulevards 
 or in the Public Nurseries amongst the young. 
 And as the sun mounts higher and the day 
 grows hotter, so does the untiring energy of 
 the people grow with the hours of the day. 
 Faster and faster they run, and more and 
 more hurried are the greetings between friend 
 and friend by the way. Sometimes in their 
 hot haste they will not hesitate to throw 
 themselves down from the rock where the 
 town is built, if that may appear to be the 
 shortest road to the stony plain beyond, 
 where they collect their granite blocks and 
 logs of wood for building. Laden with huge 
 burdens often some forty times their own 
 size they return and toil up the face of the 
 rock, undismayed by fatigue or by the great 
 weight they carry, or by stumbling and slid- 
 ing backward over and over again. Inspired 
 by this ardent spirit of courage under diffi- 
 culties, this people never fail at the last to 
 conquer and achieve their end. During the 
 long hours of the longest summer day, they 
 have never been seen to slack work for one 
 104
 
 An (Almost) Ideal City 
 
 instant, nor stop for food or rest. Only 
 at sundown do they cease from labour, and 
 retire within the houses to sleep. But should 
 the city walls on a sudden be attacked by an 
 enemy, or destroyed, perhaps, in the dead of 
 night as not seldom happens in a country 
 where storms of rain and hail do so often 
 rage I have known the devoted citizens with 
 one consent forego their night's repose, and 
 guided who knows how ? issue forth into 
 the darkness, without lamp or torch to light 
 them, to fight and conquer the foe, or labour 
 at repairing the breaches. And their zeal is 
 such, that before morning light their cherished 
 towers and bulwarks have been often known 
 to be almost entirely rebuilt. And not even 
 then will they rest. As though fired by a 
 fresh ambition, the works go on with un- 
 abated vigour, and new lines of buildings are 
 added to the old, and the old increased in 
 size and height. For this people are possessed 
 by the desire to build by a passionate love 
 of architecture as well as by an intense 
 devotion to their children. And so these 
 two master passions blend together as one ; 
 for the whole city is built up more especially 
 for the sake of the rising generation. It is 
 for the young that these State Nurseries are 
 built, these great granaries stored with a 
 wealth of ripened grain, gathered in autumn
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 and brought home with such infinite care and 
 labour. Too often are the granaries dispersed 
 by accidents, or broken into and their trea- 
 sure stolen by some marauding beast or bird ; 
 for certain creatures exist that are too idle 
 to labour or store for themselves, and who 
 live by the harvests that others gathered. 
 
 With devoted care the young are nurtured, 
 and they are each and all brought up to a 
 single trade the trade of builders and road- 
 makers the builders of their homes, and the 
 engineers of their city streets and roads. It 
 must not be forgotten that an exception to 
 this rule of universal trade is made in favour 
 of the military. I never saw a soldier doing 
 mason's work nor watching the cradles of 
 the children. And thus, since all must work 
 at one art and for one great object, i.e. the 
 public good there is no room for rivalry. 
 
 Thus trades-unions are unheard of ; they do 
 not exist. As a rule, the people are a people 
 who follow Peace. Amongst the many virtues 
 they display, one, alas ! is wanting. I find 
 here no sign of love for the Beautiful. 
 There is none whatever, I fear, either in their 
 lives or in their architecture. All that is 
 done is done for Use ; and in that sense 
 doubtless their work lacks not one best 
 quality, that is, the beauty of fitness. But 
 in vain shall one turn to look for some little 
 1 06
 
 An (Almost) Ideal City 
 
 attempt at ornament whereon to rest the eye. 
 Everything is prosaically bald, and plain and 
 solid, for they are a race of stern utilitarians, 
 and they live up to the very letter of their 
 creed. And is this perchance a reason why 
 Joy finds here no place ? The gaiety of youth 
 is banished. It is useless. Life here is all 
 work and no play. I never heard one of this 
 people laugh ; I never saw them smile. There 
 are no games. The joy of Sport exists not 
 in this grave, busy city. Sometimes it hap- 
 pens that a couple of citizens will engage in 
 wrestling ; but there are no lookers-on, no 
 one takes the least interest. It is all Labour, 
 never-ending Labour, from dawn to dark. 
 Yet I believe this unceasing exertion is their 
 heart - felt, as in truth it is their sole, 
 delight. 
 
 Little mention has as yet been made of 
 the Army. They are a small body compared 
 with the rest of the population. But the 
 soldiers are as brave as lions. Strange 
 enough, they also differ physically from the 
 rest, inasmuch as a soldier's head is always a 
 very remarkably big one. One day I watched 
 a company of these big-headed warriors go 
 forth to war, formed in column. This is what 
 happened. A swollen river crossed the road. 
 The column instantly dashed into the water, 
 and heedless of their broken ranks and of a 
 107
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 hundred comrades carried away by the stream 
 and drowned all of them that were left 
 scrambled through the water, hurrying on to 
 the encounter on the other side ; and I could 
 not perceive that they were worsted. Often 
 I have seen a soldier seize with his big jaws 
 the immense head of a soldier enemy, drag- 
 ging him up and down and never letting go, 
 not even when Death comes to part the com- 
 batants. Fear or pain are things they know 
 not, or else such matters are utterly ignored 
 in this almost ideal City of Formica. 
 
 Books have been written and much has 
 been observed, and much is well known to 
 naturalists of the manners of this remarkable 
 people and their tribes ; yet as much, at 
 least, is still undiscovered of their ways of 
 life, of their policy, of the meaning of many 
 of their customs. The vulgar idea is that a 
 thing called Instinct accounts for all. An 
 easy method this of evading a difficulty. 
 Dictionaries also find it easy to interpret in- 
 stinct as " that which urges or impels." But 
 does this elucidate ? I regret to acknowledge 
 that an ancestor of my own, the famous Dr. 
 Bentley, has pronounced instinct to be "a 
 natural impulse to certain actions which the 
 animal performs without deliberation, with- 
 out having any end in view, and frequently 
 without knowing what it does." 
 108
 
 An (Almost) Ideal City 
 
 Are the Yellow Ants unaware of any end 
 whatsoever when they war against the Black 
 Ants, take prisoners, and make them do all 
 the work ? Has the " Parasol Ant " no 
 meaning in his mind when he cuts pieces of 
 green leaves and holds them over his head 
 as a protection from the burning sun ? With 
 all due respect for Dr. Bentley, I should call 
 this kind of instinct common-sense. Is there 
 no cunning in the White Ant, when he eats 
 out the whole inside wood of some great 
 house-beam, leaving it standing a mere hollow 
 sham, while he feeds in safe hiding within ? 
 or the Honey Ants, who make of themselves 
 honey-pots for the community to store ? 
 And is it in the blindness of "mere instinct" 
 that Ants keep Cows (green Aphides) in their 
 chambers and milk them, as it were ; or that 
 they never are known to molest the little 
 slippery silvery fish-like creatures who inhabit 
 the dark labyrinths of ant-hills and keep them 
 clean ? Scientific records contain numberless 
 true tales such as these. Personally, I my- 
 self have only watched the habits of the 
 Yellow Ants (of France), in capturing their 
 black slaves and forcing them to work 
 chiefly as trusted nurses for their young, so 
 far as I can recollect these, and the Riviera 
 Harvesting Ants. There have been, however, 
 not a few keen observers in all countries 
 109
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 vigilant over the strange cities of a people 
 " not strong, yet they prepare their meat in 
 summer," whose very name, as we learn, 
 means either never idle, or that they are fur- 
 nished, provided, or that they received their 
 name from their provident habits. 
 
 Sometimes, as in the small kitchen of a 
 country cottage I knew, the meaning of their 
 ways is difficult to conjecture. Behind the 
 wainscot of the kitcHen window lived a colony 
 of innumerable Black Ants. One day the cook 
 found their continued presence unbearable, 
 and a can of boiling water was poured over 
 and into the place where the ants' nest was 
 supposed to be, and soon numbers of dead ants 
 lay upon the wooden window-sill. Presently 
 a large body of survivors, having recovered 
 from their panic, appeared upon the scene, 
 and instantly set to work, and without more 
 ado they carried off every one of their dead 
 into some dark corner behind the shutter. 
 Why did they do it ? Not to supply their 
 larder, for ants are not supposed to feed on 
 one another. Was it, then, simply from a 
 sense of decency a desire to bury their dead 
 out of their sight ? In England ants are not 
 much esteemed. It is different in eastern 
 lands. 
 
 The Hindus in Rajputana are said to 
 scatter rice and sugar at the entrance to ants' 
 no
 
 An (Almost) Ideal City 
 
 nests, either to propitiate their goodwill or 
 from sentiments of fear for their power or 
 energy, or from admiration of the fore- 
 thought and sense of duty to the community 
 displayed by them. 
 
 A custom said to prevail in Arabia is a 
 tribute to the ant. An ant is placed in the 
 hand of a new-born child, in order that its 
 virtues may pass into and possess the child. 
 
 in
 
 VII 
 
 Of a Little Old House in 
 Banffshire 
 
 // AS not well to go forth abroad on Midsummers 
 Eve. On such an eve they also walk. Neither 
 should one look from the windows of the house.
 
 VII 
 
 Of a Little Old House in 
 Banffshire 
 
 From a letter written by Miss Maggie Broome to 
 a friend. December 13, 1880. 
 
 V 
 
 YOU ask me to write and tell you 
 exactly how it all was I mean 
 about what happened at Aunt 
 Rachel's house in Scotland where 
 I stayed one summer. So you shall hear 
 the whole thing : though, after all, it wasn't 
 very much. And yet I never could put 
 down in words how really frightful it seemed 
 at the time. Poor Aunt Rachel was alive 
 and well then ; and as you know, I was 
 staying with her at her little old turreted 
 house in Banffshire. I liked being there, 
 for I did pretty much what I liked all day 
 long. Aunt kept her house in the most 
 delightful comfort : she was considered 
 amongst her friends quite a notable house- 
 keeper. Her sole amusement was the mend- 
 ing and tidying up of the house-linen. The 
 "5
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 hours and days she spent in that occupation 
 and folding up and putting past that house- 
 linen ! She had absolutely nothing else in 
 the world to do however. Sewing was her 
 only joy. I, being young and light-footed, 
 I could never for my part understand the 
 pleasure nor the use of spending hours of 
 delicious sunshine in the house, engaged in 
 the dull business of hemming and marking 
 and mending, when one might be so happy 
 roaming the heather and the woods or fishing 
 in the burn, or wandering by the sea, enjoy- 
 ing the air of Scotland which is like no other 
 air. I am afraid I never once thought of 
 staying at home with Aunt to help her, or 
 to sit down and have a chat with her, and 
 try to amuse her a little, not for any least 
 little bit of a fine summer's day ; and when 
 I think of that, I feel sorry now. I disliked 
 the very sight of all that white linen that 
 used to be brought down by her maid to the 
 drawing-room for my Aunt to see to ; I was 
 always so afraid of being invited to hem 
 something. And what happened afterwards 
 in that very room, did not make me love the 
 sort of thing any better. We very seldom 
 had any visitors calling, in those days ; for 
 the station was miles away, and neighbours 
 were few and far between ; and those lovely 
 motors ! had not yet become common quite 
 116
 
 A Little Old House 
 
 so far North. So my Aunt's work-basket 
 and things remained in the room all day and 
 all night except Sundays ; and the sheets 
 and tablecloths were often left all night 
 heaped up on the floor beside her chair. 
 (Very untidy, I thought.) I must try and 
 describe the drawing-room. It was rather 
 long and narrow, with the ceiling rather low, 
 and two narrow deep-set windows were at 
 the end opposite the door. Aunt's chair 
 and little round work-table usually stood 
 about the centre of the room, near the fire- 
 place. There were a few pictures on the 
 walls, of course ; chiefly prints of dull old 
 ancestry, most of them ministers in black 
 gowns and bands, in dull old frames. We 
 did not have any flowers as a rule there or 
 anywhere else in the house. I think my 
 Aunt disliked flowers ; at least, if one hap- 
 pened to bring in a bunch of wild-roses or 
 anything, she always said they " smelt too 
 strong." There were no drawing - room 
 ornaments : only three black things on the 
 chimney-piece, which she once told me were 
 very valuable ; which they might be, but 
 nobody could call them pretty ! and only 
 one arm-chair and a high hard sofa and a 
 few good-books that nobody read set out on 
 a table, and then the work-basket and the 
 linen ; always there for ever and ever. So 
 117
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 now please picture to yourself Aunt Rachel's 
 drawing-room. The two windows looked 
 out rather drearily across some wide hilly 
 fields where black - faced Highland sheep 
 wandered about, and a little chattering burn 
 divided the fields from the heather ; and two 
 tall sycamores stood together before the door, 
 in front of the house. They are curious 
 trees, Scotch Sycamores ! These two seemed 
 to watch the house all day, and the wind 
 made uncouth noises through the branches. 
 Sometimes we could hear the sound of the 
 sea, if the wind set right for it. There was 
 no flower garden at all ; only a kail-yard, 
 with a brier-bush or two, and plenty of 
 strawberries to make up for no flowers. 
 
 One evening just before supper-time, about 
 eight o'clock, I had to go and fetch my 
 Aunt's spectacles, which she fancied she had 
 left in the drawing-room. It was Mid- 
 summer's Eve, and it was the hour when in 
 Scotland the light begins to look remote, 
 though still quite clear. The spectacles 
 were nowhere to be seen ; not on the chimney- 
 piece nor the table ; but the work and things 
 were all right. And there was, of course, 
 plenty of my " bete noire " the house-linen 
 near Aunt's chair ; and a great white sheet 
 one of the new pair she had that morning 
 brought down to hem lay an untidy mass 
 til
 
 A Little Old House 
 
 on the carpet. I forgot Aunt was waiting 
 for her glasses, and went up to the window 
 (they were both open) just to see if it were 
 a squirrel whose furry brush I thought I saw, 
 running up one of the sycamores and to 
 listen for a moment to the pipes away down 
 in the village, playing " The Flowers of the 
 Forest," or some old tune like that. At the 
 window I believe I may have stayed looking 
 out and listening and dreaming about things, 
 perhaps a little longer than I ought. The 
 evening was so dry and beautiful, with the 
 weird loveliness of those Scotch summer 
 evenings, when the belated sunset touches 
 and illumes all things with a faint red rose- 
 light ; giving such an indescribable sense of 
 far-away-ness to the highest branches of the 
 trees and leaving all else intensely cold- 
 looking. The hour which ought to be 
 twilight, but in the North is not that at 
 all, when the grass and the stones and such- 
 like stand out clear, and yet there are no 
 shadows. That hour of the evening has 
 always had a kind of fascination for me. I 
 feel as if something unearthly might happen 
 at any moment ; that one might see any- 
 thing uncanny glide by, or moving about in 
 earth or air, more especially on Midsummer 
 Eve like that was. The eve when fairies 
 and things are out and about everywhere : 
 119
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 and if you happen to be walking along 
 the road by a high wall, a black goat 
 or anything unpleasant may jump down 
 on your shoulders and terrify you out of 
 your life ! 
 
 The squirrel had scrambled down the stem 
 of the biggest sycamore, and with little leaps 
 and skips was clearing the space between that 
 and the other tree. The music still went 
 and came on the breeze from the village be- 
 low, and sounded very sweet, grieving and 
 girning as the bagpipes do. The tune had 
 changed to my favourite " Robin Adair"; and 
 I forgot myself till, suddenly, I bethought me 
 of my errand to hunt for Aunt's spectacles ; 
 and, turning from the window, hastened to 
 leave the room and go down and tell her 
 they were nowhere. You know the door 
 was at the other end of the room, opposite 
 the windows. The little round work-table 
 and the heap of white house-linen were in 
 the middle of the carpet between door and 
 windows, and in order to get to the door I 
 must pass close by the heap. I had only 
 made two steps towards the door when some- 
 thing seemed to strike me as rather odd 
 about the linen ; I fancied it almost seemed 
 to move to begin to crawl. " Nothing 
 but a trick of the gloaming light," thought 
 I. But it is not quite nice if only to fancy 
 
 120
 
 A Little Old House 
 
 you see anything inanimate crawl like that, 
 whether it does really crawl or not. So I 
 resolutely turned my head the other way 
 and tried to get past and out at the door as 
 quick as I could. I looked back something 
 constrained me to look back. . . . The linen 
 sheet heaved ! As I stared at it, it seemed to 
 creep along the carpet towards me. . . . My 
 feet stuck as though glued to the floor, while 
 the thing crept and crept on and on, and, to 
 my horror, at last got between the door and 
 me. With most frightful contortions for 
 certain I beheld the sheet move ! with a kind 
 of horrid movement, while I stood like a 
 statue unable to stir. And the huddled, 
 formless whiteness shuddered and swayed and 
 crawled and uplifted itself nearer and nearer 
 till it touched me. ... I tried to scream, but 
 my voice was dumb. And round and round 
 me it swirled and twisted and choked me 
 with its dreadful folds, folding round my 
 head and face, impalpable, as it were, like 
 thick mist cold and silent and featureless. 
 Then it absolutely drew me, helpless as I 
 was, across the room and right up under one 
 of the windows. Twisted and drawn with 
 deadly force it was impossible to escape. I 
 felt I must soon be pulled out through the 
 open window, narrow as it was. Tighter and 
 harder every moment grasped, I knew I must 
 
 121
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 be killed ! And then and then, I think 
 at last a cry burst from me, and I sank 
 down senseless while the awful whiteness, 
 as they told me after, uncurled, unwound, 
 and flowed away out through the open 
 window. 
 
 Aunt Rachel must have heard the cry, for 
 she hurried up into the drawing-room. And 
 as my senses came slowly back, I could hear 
 her scolding Helen and Hephzibah, who had 
 rushed up to see what was the matter, for 
 " leaving the windows open so late and the 
 mist lying all about the fields white as a 
 shroud ! What for were ye so careless ? " 
 And my Aunt began to be very Scotch, as 
 she always did when excited. She put me 
 to bed at once and gave me something hot, 
 for I was icy cold. 
 
 Next day I was quite myself again ; there 
 were whisperings in the house about the new 
 house-linen that had been mysteriously lost 
 in some odd way or other. But nothing was 
 said to me on the subject. Aunt was very 
 silent, never breathed a word of it to anybody. 
 Poor dear Aunt Rachel ! She herself seemed 
 lost, as it were, for a day or two. She 
 never touched her usual needlework, the 
 joy of her heart. And once when I tried 
 the drawing-room door, I found it was 
 locked. I never entered it again and did
 
 A Little Old House 
 
 not want to. It gives me the horrors even 
 to think of it. 
 
 Then they sent for me home to England ; 
 and the prospect of a change was most 
 agreeable. The day came for my departure. 
 Aunt stood at the door waving good-bye, 
 and the old squirrel was scuttling up the 
 sycamore as the fly drove off with me and 
 my boxes, and a turn in the road soon hid 
 the turreted house. And that is the last I 
 ever saw of Aunt Rachel or the squirrel 
 either, for you know she died just a year 
 after, and left me the black ornaments and 
 an ancestor or two from the drawing-room, 
 and the place was sold. I often think over 
 the happenings in that old house, and oh ! 
 how I pity whoever has to repose in the 
 sheets Aunt Rachel hemmed ! And oh ! I 
 hope I shall never again visit in a house 
 where people mend the linen and leave it 
 all in a heap on the drawing-room carpet. 
 I feel a cold shiver even now when I 
 think of it. ... You'll never get half 
 through this long history. But you wanted 
 to know about it, so now you have it. I 
 hope the account won't make you nervous! 
 Scotland is and always was the land of 
 romance. Quite different to England, you 
 know : that's what is so nice about Scot- 
 land. 
 
 123
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 Strange, is it not ? that not until some 
 time after my Aunt's death did I remember 
 what had once occurred when I was a child, 
 living with my mother in a street of the old 
 town at Dresden. It came back to my mind 
 one day. This was it : One day I ran into 
 the room where my mother's maid was fold- 
 ing and sorting out the house-linen on a 
 large table. Somehow I managed to upset 
 off the table a pile of two or three pairs of 
 sheets or tablecloths. " Oh, Fraulein ! " she 
 cried out, turning quite white, "Quick, quick! 
 Gather them up at once. If they lie on the 
 floor like that, they'll turn to winding- 
 sheets ! " I did not very well understand at 
 that time what " winding-sheets " meant. 
 But I obediently picked up the linen as I was 
 told, and thought no more about it. But 
 what a fright the German maid had when 
 the things were upset ! . . . and how I 
 laughed ! 
 
 It is an uncomfortable little superstition, 
 and I don't believe in it at all. Besides, at 
 Banff the linen had been often and often 
 lying on the floor before that midsummer 
 eve, and nothing happened. Still it is odd 
 (you knew it, I think ? ) that Aunt Rachel 
 should have died on Midsummer's Eve, just 
 twelve months after that terror I had in the 
 old house. 
 
 124
 
 A Little Old House 
 
 This is the longest letter I ever wrote in 
 my life ! and you ought to be grateful. 
 Remember it is all quite private : just be- 
 tween you and me, you know. I shouldn't 
 care for people to say I was clutched by a 
 Ghost ! 
 
 125
 
 VIII 
 
 On the Bridge at Lucerne 
 
 o 
 
 O Spirit land, 
 Thou land of dreams 
 
 A world thou art of mysterious 
 gleams 
 
 A world of the dead in the hues 
 of life.
 
 VIII 
 On the Bridge at Lucerne 
 
 A~ER the rain and thunder ceased, 
 the sun shone out hot and bright, 
 the clouds cleared off the moun- 
 tains, and there remained time for an 
 afternoon stroll before dinner. Leaving our 
 hotel on the noisy quay, where all day long 
 steamers are bustling in from different parts 
 of the lake, or puffing and blowing, getting 
 up steam to take out gay crowds of tourists 
 ready for the daily pleasure excursions 
 where idle people walk up and down from 
 morning till night, smoking and chatting 
 under the shady chestnut trees ; and omni- 
 buses rattle along to and from the railway 
 station, we pass on through old streets 
 and market-places, to the old wooden bridge 
 crossing the river, joining one quarter of 
 the town to the other. Here all is so quiet 
 that you step at once, as it were, upon a 
 narrow shred of an older world, left clinging 
 to the skirts of our matter-of-fact To-day. 
 The bridge is roofed over the usual fashion 
 in Switzerland to shelter from the snow. 
 129 i
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 On the left, at the entrance to the bridge 
 stands the corn-mill with its heavy, out-of- 
 date machinery and ponderous wheel, which 
 the deep, rapid river is still thought good 
 enough to turn, as it has done for the last 
 hundred years and more. In the wide door- 
 way of the mill lie great sacks of flour ; 
 close by in the shade waits the miller's 
 handsome white Flemish pack-horse, whisk- 
 ing away the flies with his long tail, while 
 two or three dusty millers' boys lazily lean 
 with their arms across his broad back, remind- 
 ing one of a cabinet picture by Wouvermans. 
 Turning their throats of burnished purple 
 in the sun clear-cut against the black 
 shadow of the entrance to the bridge, strut 
 half a score or so of pigeons, white, red and 
 black, picking up the grain scattered about 
 the door. And now we seem to come 
 within the precincts of some fantastic dream. 
 No one who had not seen it could imagine 
 so strange a bridge as this is ! Along its 
 whole length, in the dimness between the 
 brown rafters of the roof, are fixed pictures 
 that years have blackened and time has faded. 
 Yet if you look up long and steadily into 
 them, they will begin to grow clearer and 
 more distinct ; so that although the explana- 
 tory legends in old German, written under 
 each picture, are now almost unreadable, 
 130
 
 On the Bridge at Lucerne 
 
 their ghastly meaning becomes plain enough. 
 The pictures are done by many hands, but 
 in each the grim subject, Death, is one and 
 the same. 
 
 Death, as he comes to all ranks and condi- 
 tions of men, Death in his ghastliest form, 
 in the form of a skeleton. At the far end is 
 the Garden of Eden, and our first parents in 
 their misery, flame-driven by the stern angel 
 from the gates. Outside those happy gates, 
 Death, with a mocking smile, is ready to 
 receive them. Death starts up from the 
 pathway by the road before the plumed 
 Warrior in his pride going forth to battle, 
 and, seizing the bridle of his terrified charger, 
 turns him right the other way. In the 
 midst of his riches, surrounded by servants 
 and bales of merchandise, Death surprises 
 the Merchant Prince, in all his luxury and 
 feasting. Deaf to the man's prayers for 
 some brief respite, a bony hand is held out 
 with the written summons, from which there 
 is no appeal, citing him to appear before the 
 Great Judge. In his well-trimmed garden 
 among roses and gay flower-borders, the 
 stricken Gardener is met by Death, who 
 comes with a pruning-hook in his hand. 
 He steps between the bridegroom and his 
 blooming bride as they return from church. 
 He darts his deadly arrow straight at the
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 heart of the young girl singing over her 
 needlework, sitting beside her sister at the 
 cottage door. Death rocks the cradle of the 
 clockmaker's babe, heedless of the father's 
 grief, who points imploringly to the Clock, 
 the hands of which have scarce passed the first 
 hour of the day. Every scene, with one 
 exception only, makes Death unwelcome 
 the never-welcome guest ugly and hateful. 
 In this one picture alone is he lovely. 
 There is a dying saint stretched upon his 
 bed. Through the open window you see 
 grey evening fall softly upon the towers and 
 fields and trees of earth. On a stool near 
 the couch lies the book of the old man's 
 life closed it is written out to the last 
 page. Wide open beside it the Book of 
 Holy Scriptures, which were his Guide in 
 life and his comfort to the end. Apart, 
 with hushed voices, stand a little group of 
 friends watching. With calm, steadfast eye 
 the saint looks up into the face of Death, 
 who, robed in white, stoops down to kiss him, 
 embracing him with gentlest tenderness. 
 The holy peace of this beautiful scene, al- 
 though painted in the same hard, old-German 
 manner as the rest, would almost seem to 
 heal the cold, intense horror of the others. 
 Well may one guess and feel the intention 
 of those townsmen of old, who thus storied 
 132
 
 On the Bridge at Lucerne 
 
 their bridge across the river, the bridge 
 across which all the town must daily pass, 
 with scenes of man and his great Enemy. 
 In those days schools were so few, and 
 painted pictures had to be the books where 
 the people learned the best of their lessons. 
 At Lucerne, when in the early morning 
 hours going forth to their work or returning 
 home in the evening, when people heard the 
 sound of the flowing stream under the 
 boards where their feet went, and saw the 
 shadowy Deaths overhead, they were taught 
 to remember the River of Time, the River 
 that divides Time and Eternity, and that 
 dark, painful, Bridge which, soon or late, all 
 must tread. Half-way across, on one side, 
 is built a little chapel dedicated to the patron 
 saint of rivers, where a dim little lamp burns 
 day and night before the small altar-stone. 
 Wooden benches there are also, all along 
 the sides of the bridge, whereon weary ones 
 may rest. And here, this hot June day, I 
 and my friend sat for nearly a whole hour ; 
 dreamily listening to the rush of never- 
 resting waters hurrying on in endless race 
 below, whilst ever and anon at our feet, 
 through chinks in the wooden flooring, came 
 quick gleams of beryl-green. 
 
 We, too, read lessons in the ancient, 
 painted legends above, faint as they were,
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 and sometimes hard to decipher ; or we 
 turned with loving gaze to the low, narrow 
 openings on either side, where pictures of 
 another kind are set. It was Nature who 
 painted these in her own fresh day-bright 
 colours. Scenes of the battlemented walls 
 of Lucerne and lines of ancient towers 
 round towers, and watch-towers tall and 
 square and peaked red roofs ; the top of 
 one grey tower crowned by a great glittering 
 image, a knight clad in silver armour, 
 bearing in his knightly hand a banner, 
 which did service as the town weather-cock ; 
 green and sunny apple orchards fringed 
 with black fir plantations ; white clouds 
 travelling calmly along open spaces of fair 
 blue sky these were the pictures we best 
 loved. Tramp, tramp, tramp ! ring the 
 heavy footsteps going by across the bridge. 
 Now a party of soldiers ; now half-a-dozen 
 rollicking students shouting out songs in 
 chorus, or a woman with a market-basket 
 on her arm and a little child running by 
 her side ; workmen with their tools going 
 home ; children just let loose from school, 
 pattering past in joyous bands, with books 
 in knapsacks on their shoulders ; a man 
 with spectacles on his nose, walking fast and 
 reading as he walks; a blind man slowly 
 feeling his way with his staff. Tramp,
 
 On the Bridge at Lucerne 
 
 tramp, tramp ! a ceaseless flow of echoing 
 steps. Above, among the gloom and the 
 shadows of the old rafters, the pictured 
 skeletons lead their grim dance of death, 
 while old spiders spin cunning snares in 
 dark and crooked corners. And never a man, 
 woman, or child lifted a glance as they 
 passed on, nor staid an instant at the chapel 
 grating, or even looked that way ; save only 
 one miserable beggar woman, who knelt 
 there in her rags for ever so long, mumbling 
 and telling her beads with a side-glance at 
 us between every prayer. It is the same 
 with the townsfolk of Lucerne as every- 
 where else the world all over. Never a 
 thought of Death, be he never so near, 
 ready to set the mark of his broad arrow 
 on our nearest and dearest, to cross the 
 threshold of our next-door neighbour, or 
 look in the face of a friend. There is never 
 any time to think of things like this. The 
 world goes too fast. 
 
 And the afternoon went by as we lingered 
 on upon that ancient bridge. At night, 
 when the moon was bright and one large star 
 shone like a glowworm in the yellow west, 
 we came there again ; and the gaunt skele- 
 tons glimmered in the faint light of the chapel 
 lamp and not a sound was heard, save the 
 solemn swirl of rushing broken waters. . . .
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 It was many years after that dear dead 
 June of long ago full twenty years after 
 that a night came when I found myself 
 once more upon the strange old Bridge of 
 Lucerne. ... It was late afternoon ; and 
 somehow I felt as though it were nothing 
 unusual to be there again after all those long 
 years, only that now I was alone, and, to say 
 truth, not there at all save in spirit. With 
 echoing steps the same crowds of Lucerne 
 townsfolk went past, bent on their daily 
 business, and bands of children bent on 
 play. The same sounds were in my ear 
 that I remembered when first I and had 
 visited the Bridge. And with the same- 
 ness of the sounds I seemed to grow sleepy ; 
 for I was quite alone, and thinking of noth- 
 ing, and one is often poor company for 
 one's-self. Overhead I saw the well-re- 
 membered scenes of Death. Some quaint, 
 some terrible ; just the self-same story for 
 the dance of Death is never done. The 
 grey ghastly Skeletons ; the Enemy, the 
 Friend. As of old the tramp and ring of 
 footsteps beat upon the ear, till the noises 
 ceased at last, and silence fell the shadowy 
 silence of a Dream. And so the Dark crept 
 on, until dim infrequent lamps began to 
 burn in their places, on the Bridge, and still 
 I lingered on. 
 
 136
 
 On the Bridge at Lucerne 
 
 Beyond the turn at the farther end, the 
 sound of steps, approaching nearer and 
 nearer, suddenly broke up the silence, and 
 I saw two men coming slowly round the 
 angle of the bridge. One seemed very tall, 
 and somewhat past middle life and of very 
 noble mien ; the other, young and slight, 
 his figure a little bent, his hat a little 
 slouched over the brow. Though the light 
 of the few lamps was so dull, so very dim, 
 it might be quite plainly seen that these 
 two companions had not the look of mere 
 modern, every-day people. There was noth- 
 ing about them the least in common with 
 the world as we know it to-day. Their 
 countenances and features, their whole aspect 
 seemed to set back the date for some twice 
 a hundred years. One, the older of the 
 two, carried over his shoulder a short, black 
 cloak ; otherwise I could perceive nothing 
 very remarkable in the form or fashion 
 of their vesture. Yet plainly both were 
 signed with the seal of another age than 
 ours ; and as they went I heard them dis- 
 course together in hushed, grave tones. 
 
 The Bridge is long ; yet while They were 
 still a good way off, some magic already 
 wove unseen spells upon the gloom that 
 lay betwixt myself and them. Nearer and 
 nearer came the two ; and as they ap-
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 preached, unearthly influences seemed to be 
 shining imperiously from the eyes of one 
 of them ; seemed to meet mine, to search 
 through and through the blackness that 
 covered the place between the great beams 
 where I stood. More intent, more mag- 
 netic, as it were, grew that deep and pene- 
 trating look which, for so much space of 
 time as that wherein one might walk ten 
 paces, gripped me fast. And then, passing 
 away, was for ever gone. 
 
 Not until after they had passed out of 
 sight did I remember and picture to myself 
 the face of the younger man, and how it 
 bore something of the semblance of the 
 face of Death, but Death without fear. 
 There was nothing to repel, in a counten- 
 ance whose whole aspect seemed to soften 
 into lines of gentlest ruth. The Name, 
 which to me has been long familiar, not 
 many had quickly guessed, nor recognised 
 his likeness to the grisly actor in those 
 stern scenes fast fading overhead among 
 the cobwebs in the raftered roof. The 
 strangers went their way, went past me ; 
 and the sound of their voices and far- 
 echoing steps had died away and I was 
 left alone in the gloom upon the silent 
 Bridge. . . . 
 
 After all, what was it but the gleam of 
 '38
 
 On the Bridge at Lucerne 
 
 a vision in one's sleep ? A dream, dreamed 
 long years after the first and last time 
 I ever crossed that ancient Bridge or ever 
 saw Lucerne. It is only the smallest 
 fragment of a " baseless fabric," too slight 
 perhaps to tell or to be written, too poor 
 a thing even to be recalled, save only 
 for a certain intense vividness and strong 
 individuality in those two unknown com- 
 panions, and because of the deep, soul- 
 piercing glance of one of them. There 
 was nothing indefinite about them. Each 
 walked firmly with all the reality and 
 animation of Life itself. So true to life 
 did they appear, these unknown, visionary 
 strangers of a dream, that even at this 
 hour, after another long interval of time, 
 now, when 1 think of it, I see them again 
 advancing towards me along the Bridge ; 
 again I hear their step on the hollow 
 boards, and feel the unwont, mystic, Power 
 of the Eye. 
 
 Who they may have been, or whom 
 they personated, I know not. And yet, 
 not seldom is it known that Life and 
 Death have walked together. Sometimes 
 have they not held parley, one with the 
 other? It is not always the strong or the 
 noble to whom is given to lead the way; 
 nor the long sermon or the large book
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 that leaves always on the mind the deepest 
 mark. 
 
 Those strangers were but imagery of the 
 night ; created only to vanish as soon as one 
 awakes to be as though it had never been. 
 Sir Thomas Browne, in one of his " manu- 
 scripts," writes thus 
 
 " Half our days we pass in the shadow of the earth ; 
 and the brother of death exacteth a third part of our 
 lives. . . . The day supplieth us with truths ; the night 
 with fictions and falsehoods. . . . That there should be 
 divine dreams seems unreasonably doubted by Aristotle." 
 
 Sometimes 
 
 " Nature else hath conference with profound Sleep, 
 and so doth warning send, by prophetising dreams, what 
 hurt is near, and gives the heavy careful heart to fear." 
 
 They who met me on the Bridge be- 
 longed to no " prophetising dream," for 
 they spoke no word. They were silent. 
 
 In another place it is said that " Dreams 
 are for our instruction"; and in the muir- 
 lands of mist, where dreams abide, this may 
 in days far past have been. The nocturnal 
 vision at Lucerne, presaged nothing; it fore- 
 told nothing. There was no remembrance 
 of the past bound up with it ; no hope of 
 the future contained in it. Yet there still 
 endures within the mind, an impression 
 powerful and lasting one that has lasted 
 140
 
 On the Bridge at Lucerne 
 
 these three and thirty years, and remains 
 still freshly vivid. 
 
 Curiously disunited and incommunicable 
 is the make up of a dream. A little here 
 and a little there. The tones of a voice 
 heard once. A word we wait for, that is 
 never said ; a look that might have been, 
 but never was. Difficulties insuperable, 
 ending in nothing. The shadow of unseen 
 wings; short terrors and endless perplexities. 
 With the night all is begun ; with the morn- 
 ing's light all has vanished even as a dream 
 when one awaketh. . . . 
 
 The Bridge of Lucerne is without doubt 
 the dreamiest of bridges. 
 
 The Two who crossed that night were 
 unlike the people met in every-day life. I 
 remembered, the two men which were Angels, 
 that stood before the door of Abraham's 
 tent in the evening. . . . Some semblance 
 bore they of immortal spirits, with a Message 
 to deliver. The moment passed ; and their 
 lips were dumb. On a page of life's Day 
 Book, I saw it written, " In the dawn or at 
 moon-rise, at noon or in the night, an hour 
 comes. The same long-past vision shall 
 return to-morrow or long after ; and a word 
 be spoken the message of older years, un- 
 uttered then upon the Bridge at Lucerne." 
 
 141
 
 IX 
 In Praise of Thirds 
 
 * 
 
 As the flight of a bird through the air.
 
 IX 
 In Praise of Birds 
 
 THERE are not many lovers of beau- 
 tiful things that are not made con- 
 tinually to feel in their heart it is 
 misery to love ! I do not mean the 
 romance of love that belonged to our youth ; 
 that remains the same as ever, divinely happy, 
 imperishably beautiful. But for such as 
 know what it is to love and sympathise 
 deeply with the lower creation as it is called 
 they recognise at every turn the law, hard 
 and fast like a law of Nature itself, causing 
 that which most they love to become a source 
 of greater pain than pleasure. Life would 
 certainly be less hard for some of us did we 
 not care as we do for God's creatures of the 
 animal world. And this leads up to the love 
 most fraught with pain at least to they who 
 care for them as so many in these days do 
 the love which is almost universal, the love 
 of birds. 
 
 Much of our trouble must be thus ex- 
 plained : that while we know Nature to be 
 so careful of the type that scarcely ever is it 
 MS K
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 lost, the relentless persecution with which 
 birds of all kinds are pursued does threaten 
 the loveliest of their race with extinction 
 and the world with the loss of almost its 
 best and dearest charm. 
 
 The love of birds is the earliest fancy of 
 our childhood, the love which grows with 
 our growth, and grows still warmer as we 
 ourselves get older. And the older we are, 
 the sorer the grief we have with it ! 
 
 There is something so engaging, so strange, 
 so unknown about the birds. The attrac- 
 tion of them, I believe, is felt in some ways 
 even more generally now than formerly ; and 
 it spreads in these days in wider circles. 
 An observation I remember hearing from a 
 friend one winter's day as we passed by a 
 holly-tree, all scarlet with its fruit, a red- 
 breast sitting in the midst and singing his 
 little song would scarcely be ventured now. 
 My friend said, " Do you really care for 
 birds ? They seem so dull to me ! " 
 
 A dull world indeed would it be without 
 them ! In UOiseau, by the French author 
 Michelet, occurs a passage which might be thus 
 translated : " Human life becomes common- 
 place as soon as man is no longer surrounded 
 by the great company of birds those innocent 
 beings whose movement and whose voices and 
 playfulness are like the smile of Creation." 
 146
 
 OPPRESSED WITH A SENSE OF LOSS !
 
 In Praise of Birds 
 
 In the country the wild birds are always about 
 us, tame or shy, as the case may be. They 
 always look quite young and happy, taking 
 the liveliest interest in the grass and the flies, 
 and in the labourer's work, or whatever 
 happens to be going on in field or garden. 
 We do not tire of admiring their grace and 
 their quaint ways ; and it is only when some 
 blackbird uses "the golden dagger of his 
 bill " to dig out a poor worm from the lawn 
 that well, we look the other way ! While 
 free in the open air, the birds seem never to be 
 ill, never to die unless by accident ; they are 
 scarcely ever found " self-dead " not even 
 under the bushes, where one might think 
 they would often creep away to die. Only 
 in the great frost three or four winters back, 
 in many places some were said to be starved 
 to death, and lay dead upon the ground. In 
 that year, even in gardens where food was 
 regularly put out for them, and their various 
 tastes consulted, they starved in numbers. 
 Green plovers would come close about the 
 very doors and windows, and yet refuse even 
 the chopped meat and bread ; and I fear it 
 was a few thrushes and blackbirds who grew 
 fat, and prevented the many sharing their 
 feast. 
 
 Birds are forever flitting in and out of 
 the trees, or singing among the branches, or 
 47
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 flying happily through the air who knows 
 whither? Once for full seven years a black 
 and white blackbird lived in peace in our 
 garden ; then suddenly the others began to 
 attack him and pull out his feathers. We 
 saw him no more ; and the body of even that 
 remarkably piebald bird was never found. 
 The poet Burns may have had something of 
 this in mind when he wrote 
 
 " Ilk happing bird, wee helpless thing, 
 That i' the merry month o' spring 
 Delighted me to hear thee sing, 
 
 What comes o' thee ? 
 Where wilt thou cower thy chittering wing, 
 
 And close thy e'e ? " 
 
 The birds are ever round us, but we don't 
 understand them much ; and when kept 
 prisoned for years in our cruel cages, cheer- 
 ing us by their song and liveliness, how often 
 do they at last elude our best care, drop from 
 the perch, and die, while we sadly feel we 
 have known nothing about them all the time. 
 
 Matthew Arnold, in his pathetic lines on a 
 dead canary, says how truly too many of us 
 might well confess 
 
 " Birds, companions all unknown, 
 Live beside us, but alone ; 
 Finding not, do all they can, 
 Passage from their soul to man ! 
 Kindness we bestow and praise, 
 Laud their plumage, greet their lays ; 
 148
 
 In Praise of Birds 
 
 Still beneath their feathered breast 
 Stirs a history unexpressed ; 
 What they want we cannot guess, 
 Fail to mark their deep distress, 
 Dull look on when death is nigh, 
 Note no change, and let them die." 
 
 Yet, little as we understand birds, they 
 assuredly know pretty well all about us ; and 
 they never mistake their friends. A happy few 
 there are, possessors of some kind of secret 
 fascination, whom the whole world of birds 
 will follow and will trust. Of this strange 
 influence the naturalist Charles Waterton is 
 known to have been a memorable example. 
 When he walked in the woods the birds came 
 out to meet him, settling on his shoulder, 
 and coming to his call from any distance. It 
 is told in his memoirs that when the good 
 man died and his body was conveyed in a 
 boat across the lake to the spot where his 
 father was buried, and where he himself 
 desired he might be laid, in a sequestered 
 nook of the park, a flight of birds suddenly 
 appeared, gathering as it went, and followed 
 the boat to its destination. The species to 
 which these birds belonged is not recorded ; 
 most likely they were various. Many kinds 
 of birds there are who hook themselves on 
 to us, as it were, in some strange, slight way, 
 taking part as well as they can in the lives 
 149
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 of their human neighbours. There is the 
 swallow, herald of spring, who builds under 
 our eaves or in corners of our windows and 
 doorways. The first swallow is hailed with 
 joy, for does she not bring summer from 
 across the sea? In the Roman calendar, I 
 believe, the only mention of natural history 
 is that, on February 24, swallows appear. (In 
 France she is called " the messenger of life," 
 and in Ireland " the devil's bird.") Night- 
 ingales, who prefer the come and go of busy 
 life, and delight to nest within sound of a 
 railroad ; tomtits, whose pleasure it is to 
 nest in our garden pumps or convenient letter- 
 boxes near our gates ; sparrows of course, 
 they possess themselves of all ! I know a 
 first-rate gardener who, strange to tell, has 
 a liking for them. " Sparrows," he says, 
 "have more sense than parrots, only they 
 can't speak." Above all other birds, the 
 robin, as all the world knows, shows most 
 trust and confidence in us. 
 
 " The pious bird with the scarlet breast, 
 Our little English robin, 
 The bird that by some name or other 
 All men who know thee call thee brother, 
 The darling of children and men." 
 
 In winter, if allowed to enter at door or 
 window, the robin will come in, will warm 
 itself on our hearthrug, and, if permitted,
 
 In Praise of Birds 
 
 will roost every night, for weeks perhaps, 
 perched somewhere in the room. It simply 
 knows not what fear means in the garden 
 when at watch over a man with a spade. 
 
 Last winter a robin tapped at our dining- 
 room window, and insisted upon being let 
 in. In the house it lodged and made itself 
 at home until the April following. Every 
 night the bird roosted in a different corner 
 in a different room, upstairs or downstairs. 
 Every day at breakfast and luncheon it 
 hopped on to the table and feasted, helping 
 itself largely to butter in the morning and 
 to cake at luncheon, &c. The confidence 
 shown by such a little thing, in trusting 
 itself among a household of large human 
 people, was indeed touching. In February, 
 when the family went south, the robin de- 
 scended to the kitchen, living contentedly 
 with the servants until wide-opened doors 
 and windows proclaimed the spring. 
 
 But the most singular instance that I have 
 known of a robin's fearlessness was the kind 
 of military instinct, which some years ago 
 led a pair to make their nest at the back of 
 a target at Aldershot. It was in the shoot- 
 ing range of the 4th battalion of the 6oth 
 Rifles ; and the Colonel of the regiment 
 told me of it at the time. The little pair 
 paid not the least attention to the shots
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 thundering on the target just at the back 
 of their nest. The soldiers were careful not 
 to meddle with them, and the young brood 
 hatched, and were brought up in safety. 
 It may be hoped that they did not all hatch 
 out stone deaf! 
 
 Of ill-omened birds, so called, we need 
 not say much, for it is only by the supersti- 
 tion of man that they are said to be so. It 
 has nothing to do with their feeling for us. 
 The handsome black and white magpie is 
 nearly killed off from our woods and fields, 
 and the coming generation will probably 
 know little about its unlucky reputation, 
 though they may chance to find in some 
 antiquated book of north-country folk-lore, 
 that the magpie was the only bird who did 
 not go into the ark with Noah. It preferred 
 to sit outside on the roof, jabbering over the 
 drowned world ; and so it has been unlucky 
 ever since. " The boding raven," however, 
 still is likely to survive, since it has been 
 pushed back by civilisation into solitary 
 places and inaccessible crags. In one such 
 haunt, the Raven's Craig, just above a wild 
 lake in Inverness-shire, I have seen them 
 hovering like black blots on the face of the 
 cliff. I have not learning enough to know 
 whether in the earliest times ravens were 
 accounted " unlucky." If so, why were 
 152
 
 In Praise of Birds 
 
 they chosen from among all the birds of 
 the air for the merciful errand of carrying 
 bread to Elijah in the wilderness? (Did 
 they steal it ? They are given to theft !) 
 Also in the Written Word we are assured 
 that " God heareth the young ravens when 
 they cry out unto Him." And nothing of 
 this is said of doves, or of any other white 
 or heavenly kind of bird. An explanation 
 is given in the Egyptian commentary on St. 
 Luke, in the Coptic script by Epiphanius, 
 A.D. 368402. The passage* is certainly 
 very curious, and I am permitted to tran- 
 scribe it here. " Why, then, did the evan- 
 gelist mention no name amongst the birds 
 except ravens only ? Because the hen raven, 
 having laid her eggs and hatched her young, 
 is wont to fly away and leave them, on account 
 of the hue of their colour, for when hatched 
 they are red in appearance. Then the 
 Nourisher of all Creation sends to them a 
 little swarm of insects, putting it by their 
 nest, and thus the little ravens are fed until 
 the colour of their body is, as it were, dyed 
 and becomes black. But after seven days 
 the old ravens return, and, seeing that the 
 bodies of their young have become perfectly 
 black like their own, henceforward they take 
 to them and bring them food of their own 
 
 * Translated by the Rev. George Horner. 
 153
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 accord." It is for naturalists to ascertain 
 whether or no this strange account of the 
 young ravens holds good in our day. There 
 is possibly some dark germ of truth conveyed 
 in this Coptic script. Some time ago I was 
 given a letter to read, in which a lady told 
 to a friend the story of a " raven tree " that 
 had stood for ages in her home-field. She 
 wrote that the old shepherd, who had lived 
 in that place all his life, used to watch a 
 pair of ravens, who year after year the bird 
 is said to live for a hundred built their nest 
 and brought up young in the branches of a 
 great tree in the midst of the field. The 
 old man used to tell, that it was the custom 
 of the parent birds to fly away and leave 
 their young soon after they were hatched, 
 and not return to them until a fortnight 
 after. On their return the ravens then fed 
 the young ones and looked carefully after 
 them until they left the nest. This seems 
 a curious corroboration of the ancient story, 
 and I believe there is no reason to doubt its 
 accuracy. 
 
 It is a long step from the fourth century 
 to the days of Shakespeare and " Macbeth." 
 Lady Macbeth says 
 
 "... The raven himself is hoarse 
 That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan 
 Under my battlements." 
 '54
 
 In Praise of Birds 
 
 And farther yet to the ballad quoted by Sir 
 Walter Scott 
 
 " And thrice the raven clapped its wing 
 Around the towers of Cumnor Hall." 
 
 The appearance of solitary birds in the 
 Forum at Rome was believed to presage 
 the death of Caesar. Also " the many- 
 wintered crow " shares fully in the un-luck 
 of blackness. In " Plutarch's Lives " it is 
 told how Cicero went on shore, and entering 
 his house, lay down to repose himself, and 
 how a number of crows settled in the chamber 
 window and croaked dismally in most doleful 
 manner. " One even entered in, and alight- 
 ing on the bed, sought with its beak to draw 
 off the clothes with which he covered his 
 face. On sight of this the servants began 
 to reproach themselves : ' Shall we remain 
 spectators of our master's murder? Shall 
 we not protect him, so innocent and so great 
 a sufferer, when the brute creatures give him 
 marks of their care and attention ? ' They 
 carried him towards the sea," &c. 
 
 The downy-feathered, silent-flying bird of 
 wisdom, the owl, is feared by many "the 
 obscure bird that clamours the livelong 
 night." 
 
 " It was the owl that shrieked, the fatal bellman 
 Which gives the stern'st good-night." 
 
 155
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 In India the white owl, however, always 
 brings good luck. By the Hindoos it is 
 held sacred to the goddess of prosperity ; 
 and for luck's sake it is welcomed to nest 
 and breed in their houses, while the midnight 
 cry of the " Seven Sisters," whoever those 
 strange birds may be, makes those who hear 
 it tremble. 
 
 Greater in number, as one likes to believe, 
 are, on the other hand, the Fortunate Birds. 
 There are few, let us hope, among our 
 friends who have not, at some time in their 
 lives, known the meaning of " halcyon 
 days." The halcyon is thus described by 
 Pliny: "This bird, so noticeable, is little 
 bigger than a sparrow. For the more part 
 of her pennage, blew intermingled yet among 
 with white and purple feathers. . . . They 
 laie and sit in mid-winter when daies be 
 shortest ; and the times when they are broodie 
 is called halcyon daies ; for during that 
 season the sea is calm and navigable, espe- 
 cially on the coast of Sicilie." What visions 
 of calm sea-born loveliness does the quaint 
 old translation call up for us ! And is there 
 not a haunting music in these lines ? 
 
 " Blow, but blow gently, oh, fayre winde, 
 
 From the forsaken shore, 
 And be as to the halcyon kinde 
 Till we have ferried o'er." 
 156
 
 In Praise of Birds 
 
 The Swan in legend is fortunate. In a 
 poetic dream of the ancients it was the birds 
 flying up and down the banks of the river 
 of Lethe that " caught the names of the de- 
 parted, and, carrying them for a little while 
 in their beaks, let them fall into the river, 
 where they would have been lost only that 
 the swans watching near caught a few names 
 and carried them to temples, where they 
 were consecrate." Amongst "the fortunate 
 birds " the dove must be counted as supreme 
 in its peaceful prestige. It is the type of 
 gentleness and innocence, and of faithful, 
 devoted love. And are we not exhorted to be 
 " wise as serpents and harmless as doves " ? 
 Every movement of the dove is full of 
 grace. It is the emblem of Peace. Alas, 
 that in fairness we have to own the amazing 
 fact of the parent doves' cruel and quarrel- 
 some behaviour ! The drying up of the 
 waters after the flood was signified to Noah 
 when the dove came to him in the evening, 
 " And, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf 
 pluckt off." To this day, year after year 
 for love-seasons immemorial, the dove, when 
 nesting, has carried flowers and leaves in her 
 mouth. In gardens where these birds are 
 allowed their freedom, they will often fly 
 through the windows into the house, and 
 carry off spoil from the flower-glasses. Pink
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 is their favourite colour. I have often seen 
 a pink sweet-pea laid by the male dove 
 tenderly across the neck of his mate as she 
 sits on the nest. It happened only last 
 summer in London, that early one morning 
 a young girl, sleeping with the window 
 open in an upper room in Lowndes Street, 
 awoke to find a stray dove sitting at the 
 foot of her bed and the bird held a rose- 
 leaf in its bill. 
 
 Instances of the old belief in birds and 
 their human sympathies might well be multi- 
 plied. Aldovrandi (1527) tells us of the 
 parakeet " who so moved the heart of the 
 Oriental emperor Basilius the bird repeat- 
 ing for his condemned and incarcerated son, 
 Leo, those lamentations it had heard from 
 the sorrowing women that Basilius again 
 took his son to his bosom, leaving him his 
 empire as an inheritance." In more recent 
 times there is the extraordinary tale, to be 
 taken for what it is worth, of a parrot who 
 served as chaplain in some ship, reciting 
 prayers to the sailors, and afterwards telling 
 the rosary ! Then there is the legend of a 
 white-breasted bird, that is said to appear 
 invariably in the death-chamber when the 
 death occurs of any member of the family 
 it haunts. 
 
 In Dean Stanley's " Historical Memorials 
 '58
 
 In Praise of Birds 
 
 of Westminster Abbey," it is recorded, con- 
 cerning the funeral of Queen Mary II., 1695, 
 that " a robin red-breast, which had taken 
 refuge in the Abbey, was seen constantly on 
 her hearse, and was looked upon with tender 
 affection for its seeming love to the lamented 
 queen." And I may be pardoned for quot- 
 ing from one of the morning papers an 
 incident which was remarked by many at 
 Queen Victoria's funeral at Windsor on 
 February 4, 1901 : " And then befell a thing 
 so strange and beautiful as to almost pass 
 belief. Just as the jewelled crown upon 
 the coffin passed into the open air a dove 
 flew out from over the chapel door. There 
 it circled for a moment, when its mate flew 
 out, and both together those grey birds 
 flew slowly, side by side, over the quarters 
 of the military knights and on towards the 
 tomb at Frogmore." 
 
 There is more to tell about birds than 
 may be said in a day. Volumes might be 
 filled with the wonders of their life-histories, 
 with the endless story of their intelligence, 
 their power of affection to man, or of de- 
 votion to their offspring. I have for long 
 known the story of two incidents illustrating 
 these two qualities in birds. The first * was 
 told me by a relative, to whom it happened 
 
 * From Mary Boyle's " Autobiography." 
 159
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 many long years ago when she was a child. 
 " Mary Boyle was walking with her mother, 
 when we were attracted to a small cottage 
 by the exquisite singing of a thrush, which 
 hung in a wicker cage outside the door. We 
 stood listening, and then my mother entered 
 and made acquaintance with the old couple 
 within, asking would they be willing to 
 part with the thrush to her? At first a 
 blank look came over the old man's face ; 
 but he was poor and ailing, and at last a 
 sum was named, the double of which was 
 paid by my mother, who sent a servant next 
 morning for the bird. 
 
 " Disappointment resulted. The cage was 
 placed in our drawing-room window, but 
 not a sound, not a note came from the 
 melancholy thrush, who drooped and hung 
 his head as if moulting. We fed it, we 
 coaxed it ; but it remained silent. My 
 mother was indignant. She had not pressed 
 the old people ; she had but asked were 
 they willing to sell the bird ; she had given 
 them double the sum asked ; it looked as 
 if another had been palmed off instead of 
 the magnificent songster. 
 
 " We gave the thrush several days' trial, 
 
 but at length we sent for its late owner. 
 
 The door opened ; in he came, hat in hand. 
 
 My mother rose, armed with some mild 
 
 1 60
 
 In Praise of Birds 
 
 rebuke. But neither could speak, for no 
 sooner did the old man appear than the bird 
 leaped down from its perch, spread its wings, 
 and broke into so triumphant a song of joy 
 that the whole room vibrated. * What, 
 pretty Speckledy,' said the old man, approach- 
 ing ; ' you know me, then, do you ? ' And 
 the thrush kept flapping his wings, dancing 
 with joy. It was without a doubt the same 
 bird ; but, like the Hebrew captives, it could 
 not sing in a strange land. ' Take it back,' 
 said my mother ; ' I would not part such 
 friends for all the world.' ' 
 
 The other anecdote used to be told by the 
 late Lady Elizabeth Villiers, and occurred 
 on her own property in Holland. On a 
 tree close to a house, within a short distance 
 of the river or canal, there was a storks' 
 nest, with young ones. The roof of the 
 house caught fire one day ; and though the 
 flames did not actually reach the tree, the 
 heat became scorching. So the mother stork 
 flew down to the water, got into it, and 
 drenched her breast ; then, returning to her 
 young, she spread the mass of cool wet 
 feathers all over them. This she repeated 
 over and over again, flying to the river, 
 going down into the water, and returning, 
 her plumage drenched with wet. And thus 
 the nest was saved, and the tender nestlings 
 161 L
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 were preserved alive until the fire had been 
 got under and all was safe. The truth of 
 this remarkable story was vouched for by 
 more than one eye-witness. 
 
 One need not, indeed, be surprised at any- 
 thing a bird does, when we consider the 
 commoner every-day marvels of their un- 
 erring instinct ; the whole mystery of their 
 lives. 
 
 The Greeks believed that birds were 
 created first of all things " an airy ante- 
 mundane throng " and the Latin poet 
 Lucretius held that it was from birds men 
 first learned music. Matthew Arnold wrote 
 
 " Proof they give, too, primal powers 
 Of a prescience more than ours. 
 Teach us while they come and go 
 When to sail and when to sow. 
 Cuckoo calling from the wild, 
 Swallow trooping in the sedge, 
 Starling swirling from the hedge, 
 Map our seasons, make our year." 
 
 In all ages birds have been the poet's 
 favourites. At the dawn of English poetry, 
 half a thousand years ago, Chaucer, with his 
 passionate love of Nature, says, in "The 
 Fowles' Assembly " 
 
 " On every bough the birdes I heard sing 
 With voice of angel in their armonie," 
 
 and then he makes a list of about thirty- 
 162
 
 In Praise of Birds 
 
 seven " fowles," with their personal charac- 
 teristics, sketched in one or two lines each 
 done to the life, as none but a poet and acute 
 observer of Nature could do ; as, for in- 
 stance, " The false lapwing full of trecherie," 
 " The cuckoo ever unkind," " The frostie 
 feldefare," and so on. 
 
 After Chaucer came other of our poets : 
 a long procession whose praise of birds, en- 
 shrined in lovely thoughts and undying 
 numbers, is left to us and to all time a 
 legacy of delight. 
 
 To name but a few amongst some of the 
 best-known lines. Who can forget Keats' 
 " Nightingale " ? 
 
 "... Light-winged Dryad of the trees, 
 
 In some melodious plot 
 Of beechen green and shadows numberless 
 Singest of summer in full-throated ease." 
 
 Or Wordsworth to the same sylvan min- 
 strel ? 
 
 ** O nightingale, thou surely art 
 A creature of a fiery heart. 
 These notes of thine, they pierce and pierce, 
 Tumultuous harmony and fierce. 
 Thou sing'st as if the god of wine 
 Had helped thee to a valentine ! " 
 
 And in another exquisite little poem of 
 Wordsworth's, the lark is 
 
 " Ethereal minstrel, pilgrim of the sky," 
 '63
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 and 
 
 " Type of the wise, who soar but never roam, 
 True to the kindred points of heaven and home." 
 
 Shelley, in his " Ode to the Lark," ad- 
 dresses it as " Thou scorner of the ground," 
 and F. Tennyson 
 
 " How the blythe lark runs up the golden stair 
 That leans through cloudy gates from Heaven to earth." 
 
 Stray fragments these, from rich stores of 
 song, by poets inspired with " all that ever 
 was of joyous, clear, and fresh," by the 
 music of those very skylarks that all the 
 world orders without a pang as a dainty dish 
 for dinner, whose bodies the careless crown 
 sees and passes by unmoved, lying heaped in 
 every poulterer's window or piled in open 
 crates beside the door. 
 
 I possess an old bird -book of 1791 in 
 which, by the way, are figured in colour two 
 sorts of dodo where we find that " in the 
 neighbourhood of Dunstable, 4000 dozens 
 of larks have been taken for the London 
 market, between September and February." 
 A trifle indeed, those 48,000, compared to 
 the 116,000 humming-birds that were sold 
 in London wholesale shops only a year or 
 two ago for ornamenting ladies' attire ! If 
 so many skylarks over a hundred years ago 
 were required for the table or for confine- 
 164
 
 In Praise of Birds 
 
 ment in cages, what must the consumption 
 now be ! The old book adds that " in sum- 
 mer they fly and sing so much, and are so 
 much engaged in the care of their young, 
 they are always lean." Poor, devoted little 
 songsters ! Nest and multiply as they may, 
 a check must come sooner or later if the 
 ever-increasing population of our cities persist 
 in eating them ; and even the blue heavens 
 where they sing will at last be empty of 
 their music. We are often assured that the 
 larks sold for cooking are mostly fieldfares. 
 This may be true, just in the same way that 
 " plovers' eggs are oftener jackdaws'." 
 
 In Lockhart's "Life of Sir Walter Scott" 
 it is told how, at the funeral of his daughter, 
 the wild music of a lark singing in the sky 
 above the open grave mingled with the 
 solemn service for the dead, and how Scott's 
 friend, Dean Milman, as he read the ser- 
 vice, heard the singing and was profoundly 
 touched. One does not read Milman much 
 now, but he described the incident well in 
 the little poem he wrote afterwards 
 
 " I watch thee lessening, lessening to the sight, 
 Still faint and fainter winnowing 
 The sunshine with thy dwindling wing, 
 A speck, a movement in the ruffled light, 
 
 Till thou wert melted in the sky, 
 An undistinguished part of bright infinity." 
 165
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 Mrs. Browning has a lovely thought about 
 England and her migrant birds. I think it 
 occurs in " Aurora Leigh " 
 
 " Islands so freshly fair 
 That never hath bird come nigh them, 
 But from his course in air 
 Hath been won downward by them." 
 
 The name of well-nigh every English bird, 
 whether common or unfamiliar, is found 
 scattered throughout the best poetry of our 
 land immortalised in song. Burns has here 
 and there an exquisite touch, such as 
 
 " Within the bush, her covert nest 
 A little linnet fondly prest, 
 The dew all chilly on her breast, 
 Sae early in the morning. . . ." 
 
 Tennyson knew well our birds and loved 
 them, and he watched them with the keenest 
 observation. Browning also loved them. 
 Every one knows his lines about the thrush 
 
 " That's the wise thrush ; he sings each song twice over, 
 Lest we should think he never could recapture 
 The first fine careless rapture." 
 
 The least observing of us all knows the 
 joy of listening in the spring to those first 
 delightful notes ; and often would we express 
 our pleasure if we could with something 
 of the tender charm of Mortimer Collins' 
 1 66
 
 In Praise of Birds 
 
 lines to a thrush singing in the lime-trees 
 often would we say with him 
 
 " God's poet hid in foliage green 
 Sings endless songs himself unseen ; 
 Right seldom come his silent times. 
 Linger, ye summer hours serene ! 
 Sing on, dear thrush, amid the limes ! 
 
 Thou mellow angel of the air ! 
 
 Closer to God art thou than I ; 
 
 His minstrel thou, whose brown wings fly 
 
 Through silent aether's sunnier climes. 
 
 Ah, never may thy music die ! 
 
 Sing on, dear thrush, amid the limes ! " 
 
 That lover of the beautiful, Lord Leigh- 
 ton himself an ardent and accomplished 
 musician delighted in the music of birds. 
 I remember, years ago, at the time when 
 people used to bore their friends by induc- 
 ing them to catalogue their likes and dislikes 
 in a tiresome drawing-room album, young 
 Leighton wrote down as his greatest pleasure, 
 " To walk in the garden and listen to the 
 birds singing." 
 
 The cuckoo must have a page or two to 
 itself. 
 
 The Cuckoo thus addressed a Starling who had flown 
 from town. 
 
 " What say they in town of our melodies ? 
 What say they of the Nightingale?" 
 "The whole town praise her song." 
 167
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 " And of the Lark ? " cried he again. 
 
 " Half the town praise her tuneful throat." 
 " And of the Blackbird ? " continued he. 
 
 "Her, too, they praise; now and then." 
 " I must ask one more question : 
 What do they say of Me ? " 
 
 " That," said the Starling, " I know not : 
 
 For I have not heard a single person speak of thee." 
 " Then will I proceed," he said, " to revenge myself 
 On the ingratitude of Men, 
 And will everlastingly speak of myself." 
 
 (From the German). 
 
 In the sweetest season of all the year, in 
 the glorious, glowing spring-time, amid a 
 thousand feasts for eye and ear, which fill 
 our hearts with new delight each season of 
 their return, because they have returned 
 again and again, and have been known and 
 loved and longed for through all the years 
 of our life, there is no lovelier sight than 
 the blossoming May, no sound more rich 
 with strange wild melody than that twofold 
 note, " at once far off and near," which fails 
 not to give back to us a moment's childhood 
 each time we hear it, and say to one another 
 " The cuckoo has come ! " 
 
 The cuckoo has come ! and the sunshine 
 and the flowers, and the green leaves, and 
 long, warm evenings are at hand, and prim- 
 roses will bloom out under trees and hedge- 
 row banks in fragrant garlands, while the 
 young, growing grass, gathers hour by hour 
 168
 
 In Praise of Birds 
 
 a deeper, livelier green. And there is the 
 hum of bees in the air, and a singing of 
 birds throughout the land. This is what 
 the cuckoo means to us. This is how we 
 translate her music, in the language of our 
 own human feeling. 
 
 To many a small mother though, among 
 the feathered ones, her song is not so agree- 
 able. In more than one sense the cuckoo is 
 a strange, mysterious creature, and her ways 
 past finding out. Wordsworth felt that, 
 when he wrote 
 
 " Oh, cuckoo, shall I call thee bird, 
 Or but a wandering voice ? " 
 
 Truth and fable have ever been mixed up in 
 her history. Are there cock and hen cuckoos, 
 or are they all hens ? or does the male bird 
 remain alone all the year in that island where 
 it is always summer, somewhere in the heart 
 of Siberia ? Somehow she has got a bad 
 name for sucking little birds' eggs to make 
 her voice clear ; but this is quite as untrue 
 as that it is unlucky to hear the cuckoo 
 before the nightingale. It is most unfair to 
 call her " slanderous cuckoo," as in the old 
 ballad. I would rather quote 
 
 " Sweet bird, thy bower is ever green, 
 
 Thy song is ever clear ; 
 There is no Winter in thy song, 
 No Winter in thy year." 
 169
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 And it is palpably unjust to compare the 
 meaningless repetition of some hollow phrase 
 to aught so sweet as " a cuckoo cry.*' She 
 has without doubt some good and valid rea- 
 son for putting her children out to nurse 
 it seems, indeed, a wise arrangement ; for she 
 might build an uncomfortable nest, and a 
 nature wild and roving like hers would 
 make but a poor " head " of the family. In 
 Denmark the Danes have an old legend that 
 excuses the cuckoo's neglect of her family on 
 other grounds. 
 
 They say that when first the cuckoo's 
 note is heard in their woods, every village 
 maid kisses her hand and asks, " Cuckoo ! 
 cuckoo ! when shall I married be ? " The 
 old people, too, bent down with age and 
 sickness, question also, " Cuckoo ! cuckoo ! 
 when shall I be released from this world's 
 cares ? " The bird obligingly answers 
 " cuckoo ! " for the number of years that 
 will pass 'ere death or the bridal come. 
 Now as the old often live on to a very great 
 age and many girls unmarried die, the poor 
 cuckoo has much ado answering every ques- 
 tion put to her. And thus the summer 
 passes, and the season for nest-building goes 
 by, and there is no time for her to make her 
 nest ; so she has to lay her precious egg in 
 any other nest she can find. I am sorry to 
 170
 
 In Praise of Birds 
 
 have to confess that sometimes, it is said, a 
 deserted nest is chosen. But this may only 
 be a naturalist's tale. I don't myself believe 
 in it. Little is really known of the cuckoo's 
 habits. It visits almost every country in the 
 world, and in every land its note is the 
 same. " Cuckoo ! " is heard in Lapland and 
 in Siberia, in Japan, Egypt, Asia, and all 
 over Europe. At the end of the season it 
 is said to go away into Africa, with our 
 turtle-dove ; and in Italy it is then called 
 by a name signifying " Turtle leader." The 
 American cuckoo is yellow-billed, but other- 
 wise differs only from ours in her domestic 
 character, which is undeniably virtuous. The 
 American builds her own nest and hatches 
 her own eggs, like all good mothers, with 
 the addition of one rather curious circum- 
 stance, viz. young birds of three weeks' old 
 are found along with new-laid eggs in the 
 same nest. And so we come round to the 
 real cause, perhaps, of our scapegrace cuckoo's 
 unnatural conduct, that it is her nature to 
 lay her eggs (in great numbers) at intervals 
 of a week or more. And the dilemma in 
 which she finds herself is this, that in Eng- 
 land, if nowhere else 
 
 " In July she prepares to fly ; 
 Come August, go she must." 
 
 171
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 and then where would her unfledged young 
 be ? One wonders, however, how it is that 
 our cousins' cuckoo across the Atlantic 
 appears not to have found this way out of 
 the difficulty ; for the English cuckoo's plan 
 does seem for once, the most astute. 
 
 Amongst modern artists of fame, Landseer 
 felt the joyous beauty of the wings of birds, 
 and painted them to the life. In the house 
 where Landseer lived in St. John's Wood 
 (since pulled down) there was a fresco, 
 painted by him on the wall in the dining- 
 room, of long-winged seagulls in undulating 
 flight above a breaking sea. After him, 
 Stacy Marks distinguished himself by his 
 paintings of every species and kind of bird. 
 Lear and others devoted their art to por- 
 traiture of the many-coloured parrots. 
 
 After dwelling thus on the true appreci- 
 ation of birds by some of the first intellects 
 of our time and before the contrast is 
 sharp indeed when we turn to consider the 
 manner of appreciation of them, common 
 with women nowadays. For some of us 
 the love of birds is accompanied by the 
 intense pain of realising how their lives are 
 everywhere wasted : a pain which must surely 
 be unknown to the thousands who, without 
 the least compunction, crown their heads 
 with dead birds, and glory in that badge of 
 172
 
 In Praise of Birds 
 
 cruelty an egret's plume. This particular 
 plume " all imitation now," the milliners 
 say I never see, without thinking of the 
 African tribe who carry within their mat of 
 hair a store of some kind of feathers, and 
 who, whenever they kill a man, take out a 
 feather, dip it in his blood, and stick it on 
 their heads. So the white egret plume, worn 
 in hat or bonnet, is always to my fancy 
 dyed red by the sacrifice of unhappy birds, 
 bleeding and perishing near their desolated 
 nests. 
 
 I was told a year ago by a London milliner 
 that " ladies now refused to wear 'ospreys,'" 
 as she called them ; " so much had been said. 
 But they were insisting on whole birds in 
 their hats." There will yet be enough for 
 them while they last. An estimate of the 
 quantities still sold, I fear, in London alone 
 is nothing less than appalling. Amongst a 
 number of other birds, such large numbers 
 as 11,352 ounces of egret and 110,490 hum- 
 ming-birds are not less than appalling. No 
 market in the world can long supply a de- 
 mand so huge as this. Few need now to be 
 reminded that the foolish word "osprey," used 
 in relation to plumes, is purely shopkeepers' 
 ornithology. They mean egret a name of 
 most evil repute, since the cruelties connected 
 with the killing of them have been made 
 173
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 public. Yet so ignorant is the world at 
 large of the natural history of birds, that 
 some are still taken in by the name. A very 
 charming lady, whose hats are certainly guilt- 
 less of aught but ostrich feathers, whilst 
 speaking of the wearing of birds, stared with 
 surprise when I explained that the milliners' 
 " osprey " is in reality a small species of white 
 stork, a native of Syria, Florida, and other 
 hot countries. " Why," said she, " I've 
 seen them alive ! and they are nothing of the 
 sort. They are dark-coloured birds, like 
 hawks. I saw them flying about a loch in 
 Scotland ; the gillie pointed them out to me, 
 and he said they were ospreys ! " 
 
 In London, when one sees the fashionable 
 world of women driving about the streets 
 or piously attending church service, in hats 
 crowned with egret, or with long bird-of- 
 paradise plumes bleached white and stream- 
 ing in the wind, one marvels how it should 
 be possible that these distinguished dames 
 can possess minds so untrained in a sense 
 so uneducated be so relentless, so lost to 
 pity, as not to know or care whether whole 
 races of birds, the loveliest and most inno- 
 cent of created beings, be killed off (and 
 mostly under circumstances of great bar- 
 barity), simply in order to make trimming 
 for their hats.
 
 In Praise of Birds 
 
 I have wondered also if the ladies of 
 " London Society " are aware of the fact 
 that they are by no means supreme in this 
 deplorable fashion ; if they really know that 
 in the matter of feathers they are far outdone 
 by their suburban and country-town imita- 
 tors. Suburban railway platforms are gener- 
 ally crowded with hats piled up in birds 
 and feathers. And the fashion lasts till 
 summer brings artificial roses to replace the 
 bird-skins. It seems a little singular that 
 apparently the only class who still habitually 
 wear ostrich feathers but never a bird-skin 
 are, or until recently were, the flower- 
 sellers of Oxford Street and elsewhere. Their 
 narrow means can scarcely account for it, for 
 the rarest kingfisher or most brilliant ruby- 
 crested humming-bird costs but fourpence. 
 Thus it is, however. For my own part, I 
 would a thousand times rather copy those 
 poor drooping ostrich plumes of the Lon- 
 don flower-girls if plumes must be worn 
 than flaunt my hat in the finest " crea- 
 tion " of dried birds and egrets that the 
 most fashionable of London shops could 
 supply. 
 
 It is agreed by most people, I believe, that 
 any appeal to woman, as woman, to give up 
 for humanity's sake any practice, however 
 cruel, if sanctioned by custom, is absolutely
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 unavailing. As well attempt to melt with 
 tears the core of the living rock ! 
 
 An example, however, was set by " mere 
 men ! " a few years since ; and now in the 
 army egret plumes are no longer worn. Yet 
 women, who so readily emulate their brothers 
 in sport or smoke, have failed to follow, 
 whole-hearted, a lead like this. 
 
 To an increasing scarcity in foreign hat- 
 birds,ratherthan to any appreciable decrease of 
 demand, is due, one fears, the less universal 
 wear of egret. I was lately told that while 
 two years ago the going out after service at 
 St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, was like " a tem- 
 pest of egret," last year only three or four 
 were counted. 
 
 Could English women oftener seek to 
 apply their hearts to the wisdom of showing 
 mercy to their little brothers and sisters the 
 birds, or sometimes find a moment's time to 
 think over the thousands of beautiful lines in 
 which our greatest poet-teachers have sung 
 the Praise of Birds, could they less seldom 
 remember this, they would surely entirely 
 cease to follow the senseless dictates of 
 fashion in feminine attire before it is Too 
 Late. 
 
 Let us brush away, if possible, the impres- 
 sion of a subject so far from pleasant by a 
 few words from Bishop Hall, in allusion to 
 176
 
 In Praise of Birds 
 
 our friend, our little English robin : " Every 
 bird can sing in a clear Heaven, in a temper- 
 ate spring ; that one as most familiar, so is 
 most commended, that sings merry notes in 
 the midst of a shower, or in the dead of 
 winter." 
 
 177
 
 X 
 
 Weeds of the Garden 
 # 
 
 The verdant clothing of the field.
 
 Weeds of the Garden 
 
 " Those wicked weeds." 
 
 CHAUCER. 
 
 I FEAR that to say so may be thought 
 a sign of poor gardening ; yet, never- 
 theless, I have to acknowledge that I 
 admire weeds. There are some, indeed, 
 whom I love like old friends, whilst the 
 grace and beauty of some are a never-failing 
 delight. Not, of course, things like shep- 
 herd's purse interesting as that really is 
 or groundsel, or chickweed ; although even 
 these have their charm, and groundsel 
 especially must not be too severely dealt 
 with, since whenever one sees it as Lord 
 Rosebery pleasantly said once " one thinks 
 of one's canary ! " Also when I confess to a 
 love of weeds, I do not refer to stinging 
 nettles, who come up singly never, but 
 always in tribes and families, always making 
 one think of ruined homes and " doleful 
 haunts where satyrs dance." Nor do I love 
 afflictions such as summer cress or hound's- 
 181
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 tongue, and others which insist on reappear- 
 ing summer after summer, in spite of our 
 persistent efforts at discouragement ; nor 
 corn sow-thistle, or dandelion, each ex- 
 quisitely leaved, but each a worry because 
 it "comes" too much. Also one has no 
 regard for " the bishop's weed." Why 
 "the bishop's" it were hard to say. One 
 detects in it nothing especially episcopal. 
 By the confused description in Gerarde's 
 " Herbal " it would seem to be honewort. 
 In Paxton it is Sison Ammi, from the Celtic 
 sisum, a running stream. This sison one 
 should call an evil weed were it not so 
 harmless. Anyhow, it is too tiresome for 
 words. Paxton is good enough to inform 
 the reader that " the seeds merely require 
 sowing in common garden soil in spring." 
 Who would be so rash as to sow it ? It 
 suffices to receive a parcel of any kind of 
 plants from the North, and bishop's weed 
 is pretty sure to be amongst the packing, 
 and you are safe to stock your garden with 
 it, without the faintest hope of ever getting 
 rid of it, for the root runs far and deep. 
 
 The chief interest of garden weeds seems 
 to rest with those that spring up naturally 
 of themselves ; which, as it were, belong to 
 the soil. They are more in number, I think, 
 than those sown by birds or in other ways 
 182
 
 Weeds of the Garden 
 
 imported. It is not easy, however, some- 
 times, to know for certain which are indeed 
 true natives of the place. 
 
 I should like to begin the list of garden 
 weeds with such as may be supposed to 
 belong naturally to my own little plot in 
 South Bucks, and by naming my favourite 
 of all, the greater celandine, in Somerset 
 called the witches' flower (Chelidonium 
 majus). So pleasant to me is this dear plant 
 that every spring, when the young growth 
 may not at once be visible, I suffer from 
 acute fears lest the stock is lost ; yet in the 
 end there is no disappointment : soon or 
 late the weed I love is sure to reappear. 
 
 Great celandine, when it has attained its 
 proper size, is full of grace. It is satis- 
 factory all round. It is an "elegant" plant 
 in the old true meaning of the word that 
 is, " made with care and taste, excellent ; 
 highly wrought." Seldom is it seen in 
 groups of more than three or four, oftener 
 it comes singly, and shadowy places seem to 
 be the most agreeable to it. There is just 
 one drawback the sinister-looking orange 
 drop that oozes from the end of a stalk 
 when broken. Yet even that ugly drop 
 is possessed of healing qualities. The leaf 
 is boldly and exquisitely cut, and the whole 
 plant bears a sort of stately presence, lowly 
 183
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 in stature though it be an aspect of strength 
 and delicacy combined. Great celandine is 
 certainly my best-loved garden weed. He 
 is said to be named " chelidon " after the 
 swallow, since he first appears in spring with 
 the swallow, and dries up when swallows 
 depart. Our celandines near the house 
 they seldom wander far began to spring 
 this year just as the first swallows arrived. 
 As for his withering away, the plant knows 
 his time, but I do not ; since I am always 
 absent from the garden from July until 
 autumn. 
 
 For the lesser celandine I fear I have 
 little fancy. Poets praise it and children 
 love it; therefore not to care for it must 
 surely be my own mistake. Just once or 
 twice it is seen in the garden nestling among 
 the roots of a rose-bush, with wide-open 
 petals glistening in the sun like gold ; and 
 then I have almost liked it. It then has 
 somehow seemed to lose its perhaps rather 
 " common " look. 
 
 Early in February or March, under the old 
 trees of a lime avenue just outside the garden 
 wall, our little celandine luxuriates. Sud- 
 denly in April last, there appeared one day 
 a purple glow the purple of wild sweet 
 violets between the polished leaves and 
 blossoms of celandine. The violets made 
 184
 
 Weeds of the Garden 
 
 netted patchwork in the midst, and they 
 seemed to redeem the almost vulgar bold- 
 ness of the little yellow-flowered plant ; a 
 violet leaning against every other green leaf- 
 disc of celandine ! 
 
 Another favourite is a handsome weed that 
 stays with us in beauty from about the first 
 week of December, until put an end to by 
 the hot suns of summer. Gardening and 
 botanical authorities have cruelly named it 
 Helleborus fcetidus. Yet except for a kind of 
 pungent odour in the leaf when crushed, 
 nothing can be discovered to warrant the 
 unpleasant name. Had I had the luck to 
 be its godmother, it should have been named 
 something that meant green - flowered, or 
 charming, or "the plant with sad-coloured 
 leaf." As usual, it is next to impossible 
 clearly to make it out in the gardening books, 
 at least in those I have been able to consult. 
 Mostly these descriptions seem to read as 
 though the authors had never beheld the 
 plants they describe ; and when there are 
 illustrations the case is worse : they seem to 
 be coloured to look pretty and except when 
 photographed are unnaturally twisted about 
 so as to fit the page. 
 
 Helleborus fcetidus , if thus it must be, seems 
 to have been with us always, more or less. 
 At least, I cannot remember when it was not 
 185
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 here. It grows only in one special bit of 
 the garden, within the shaded angle of an 
 old brick wall. I do not know of the narrow 
 boundary being ever overstepped in the 
 course of these many years past, save once 
 only, when one individual seedling contrived 
 to transfer itself from the shady to the sunny 
 side of the old wall. Here it rejoiced in the 
 hot south with equal zest as formerly in the 
 cool shade. Hellebore seems to be not 
 particular about either aspect or soil, thriv- 
 ing, as it does here, both in deep garden 
 mould and in gravel. Last December the 
 abundant blossoms of our hellebore weed 
 were conspicuously attractive, and thus they 
 remained unchanged until the first days of 
 April. Even then the light-green panicled 
 cymes, in such good contrast with the dark 
 foliage, retain their beauty while the flower 
 quietly seeds itself away. Long before the 
 hellebore has failed, euphorbia, or cape 
 spurge, begins to dot the borders here and 
 there with the columnar grace of his tall 
 stem. Euphorbia never comes in such num- 
 bers as to require much clearing away. It 
 may not be a feeling of admiration that rivets 
 attention to this curious weed ; it is more 
 perhaps the strange symmetry of the set of 
 its leaves. An equal measure of parts is no 
 unusual characteristic among plants, yet 
 1 86
 
 Weeds of the Garden 
 
 euphorbia displays this exact symmetry in 
 rather an uncommon degree. The leaves 
 are said to point north, south, east, and west ; 
 and I believe this to be true at least it is 
 thus with the euphorbias in my garden. 
 They may make a mistake sometimes, but 
 as a rule they know what they are about 
 they know the points of the compass. 
 
 What mysterious magnetism is it that 
 moves these strange leaves? What secret 
 stirring of the slow white sap ? 
 
 A fine plant of euphorbia rises against one 
 of our walls, and had attained already, by 
 May 13, a height of three and a half feet, 
 with an exceedingly massive stem. Down- 
 wards from the budding summit, where are 
 seven buds instead of the usual four, the 
 colour of the stem is all of a lovely lilac, fad- 
 ing palely into green. The leaves blunted at 
 the end, and each one's centre broadly veined 
 in dull white show a kind of careless vigour. 
 This great euphorbia seems scarcely to know 
 what to do with his own immense vitality ; 
 and before long the firm smooth pillar will 
 be spoilt by the branching out Brussels- 
 sproutwise of little sprigs all the way down. 
 The bud bears in some degree the semblance 
 of a serpent's head, and so the plant has been 
 called "Medusa" or "Medusa's head." 
 And also it is said that a dead plant will 
 187
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 come to life again and bloom if placed in 
 warm water. I have not tested the truth 
 of this. 
 
 If we climb down from these grand in- 
 comprehensibles to the earth around them, 
 which in March they have not yet begun to 
 pierce, we find in that early month numbers 
 of the little field veronica about the garden, 
 beginning to twinkle in the morning sun. 
 It is not of much account, being so very 
 small. Yet I have seen the furrows of a 
 ploughed field just outside the garden 
 literally blue with it, as it lay there in 
 countless multitudes. As the season ripens, 
 veronica agrestis goes its way and gives no 
 trouble. After this come a few more weeds, 
 both favourites and enemies. In their order 
 of precedence they are these : draba verna, 
 robin-run -the- hedge, bryony (black and 
 white), enchanter's nightshade, nettles (sting- 
 ing, white and yellow), pimpernel, fumitory, 
 corydalis lutea, nightshade, convolvulus, 
 crane's-bill, mare's-tail, &c. 
 
 Draba verna is a sweet little thing, and 
 even in childhood I had learnt its pretty 
 name. When it first flowers in February, it 
 is like a delicate miniature, so exquisite is 
 the finish of the tiny white flowers set on 
 their tender stalklet. Draba verna is very 
 cheerful in itself, and likes to make its home 
 188
 
 Weeds of the Garden 
 
 on some old mossy ledge, perhaps half-way 
 up a western wall. Such a position has been 
 chosen by it here, and here a numerous 
 family party are established, looking the 
 picture of happy well-being. At times its 
 fancy is for a number to grow in patches 
 on some sunny bit of lawn where a big tree 
 may keep the grass spare and dry. I have 
 enjoyed the sight of our little plant on the 
 wall all through March and part of April. 
 But towards the end of the latter it will 
 have grown too tall and scraggy. It will 
 look gigantic, towering above a new settle- 
 ment of forget-me-nots, which have since 
 taken possession of the moss-grown ledge, 
 crowding over every inch around the draba 
 roots. These forget-me-nots are the most 
 wonderful Lilliputians imaginable. Each 
 flower is almost smaller than the head of 
 the very tiniest minikin pin ; yet the six 
 square inches of them gathered together 
 give a perceptible sense of blueness to the 
 bit of old wall. The sky-blue is as bright, 
 and the starry form as perfect in every 
 detail, as is displayed in any of those finer 
 forms of forget-me-not that set with tur- 
 quoise the wild margins of our English 
 rivers. 
 
 Robin-run-the-hedge, or goose-grass, or 
 cleavers, is as tiresome as any of our most 
 189
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 unbeloved garden weeds. It begins early, 
 and, if let alone, would soon smother up 
 everything. The Greeks, I believe, called 
 goose - grass philanthropon, because they 
 attributed to a love of mankind its tiresome 
 clinging habit. If this were true, our re- 
 morseless pulling-up of it would indeed 
 seem hard. A much smaller, more refined 
 goose-grass grows in one, and only in one, 
 little bit of shrubbery amongst ivy and 
 yellow kerria and bramble. This may be 
 galium tricorne (though it answers not in 
 the least to Anne Pratt's description). It 
 never wanders, and makes a pretty variety 
 mixing with the dark-leaved ivy. 
 
 White bryony is springing fast in May, 
 already seeking to support itself on yew 
 hedges, box, or laurel. The small green 
 flower comes much later, with all its fur- 
 nishment of most sentient, most intelligent 
 tendrils. You may almost think you see 
 them, stretching out like hands, to clasp and 
 hold a branch or stick, or aught else like to 
 make support for the tender shoots. I do 
 not know if ever the question has been 
 decided whether tendrils twist always from 
 right to left or the other way. Once I 
 made a series of observations, but that is 
 so long ago I forget the result, if any, and 
 it does not matter much. In the case of 
 190
 
 Weeds of the Garden 
 
 shells, they, as is well known, almost in- 
 variably turn or twist one way. And if by 
 chance one is discovered going the other 
 way, the specimen is greatly prized. Sea 
 and land shells, garden snails, &c., all go 
 the same way. The law held good in primal 
 ages when this old world was young ; for 
 fossil ammonites, large or small, thousands 
 of years ago did precisely the same. Even 
 flat, fan-like shells will always spread from 
 left to right. Whichever way its tendrils 
 have to turn, we give our white bryony leave 
 to clamber where it will ; nor is it torn 
 down until the green, round berry begins 
 to redden, when, having lost self-control, the 
 plant has lost its charm. 
 
 Black bryony, Tamus communis, is rare in 
 our countryside, and we have within this 
 garden only two. These two plants are 
 cared for and cherished, for black bryony is 
 handsomer than white. The black has no 
 tendrils, yet it manages well enough ; and, 
 as for its leaf, I know no other leaf so satis- 
 fying to the eye as this, in the plain sincerity 
 of its pure outline. 
 
 Another climber which I think is native 
 to all gardens in every place everywhere 
 the fatal bindweed or withy-wind would 
 strangle in an unrelenting weak embrace the 
 entire pride of the garden. Only an un- 
 191
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 sparing vigilance will keep the beautiful 
 destroyer in check. Yet, for me at least, 
 what courage is needed to tear away a thing 
 so utterly lovely as the snow-white convol- 
 vulus flower of it ! Once I asked my 
 gardener, "Was there any place at all 
 where bindweed might be in peace and have 
 leave to live ? His reply was curt and 
 decisive : " There's NO place." 
 
 Our wicked withy-wind must be related 
 nearly to the beautiful Indian moon-flower, 
 the pure white convolvulus, that is said to 
 open only to the moon. Although this is 
 not, alas ! numbered among our English 
 garden weeds, it is known and loved of 
 many an exiled heart. Here is an English- 
 woman's impression of her first sight of the 
 moon-flower in her Indian garden one even- 
 ing of last December, in a letter home. 
 
 " I went in the garden after tea to feed 
 the hungry fishes in the fountain, and then 
 the gardener brought to me the most won- 
 drous white flower, the moon-flower. He 
 took me to see the plant itself in a tiny pot, 
 climbing up a trellis, and told me two of the 
 buds were just going to come out ; and sure 
 enough when I arrived, there was one great 
 bud quivering slightly on its long stalk, and 
 192
 
 Weeds of the Garden 
 
 in about five minutes the petals began slowly, 
 slowly to unfurl, till I could see right into 
 its clear transparent depths. I think it must 
 have taken quite fifteen minutes to fully 
 expand ; but I could not wait all the time. 
 Long enough to be reminded of Shelley's 
 lines about the rose 
 
 " ' Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air 
 The soul of her beauty and love lay bare.' " 
 
 The prettiest weed of the garden, after all 
 and the sweetest if you bruise the leaf of it 
 is the common crane's-bill. I find in an 
 old family Herbal the remark that " very 
 few know it by the name of crane's-bill, but 
 every one knows a geranium." That was 
 printed in the days when pelargoniums and 
 geraniums were all geraniums. Now and 
 then our crane's-bill will make some shady 
 garden-corner rosy, or it courts full sun- 
 shine hanging from the grey limestone of 
 the rockery. The delicate markings of the 
 small flowers seem, as it were, " put in " with 
 a touch ; and so elusive is the colour, one 
 knows not if to call it pink or rose-lilac. 
 
 No highly cultivated florist's flower could 
 be more alluring in its beauty. How many 
 such, indeed, are cultivated up to so huge a 
 doubleness and machine-made regularity that 
 a point is reached where all true distinction 
 193 N
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 and character are lost ! The flower of many 
 a persecuted wild garden weed, in compari- 
 son, seems, as one might say, " hand-made " 
 bears still in the lovely painting and shap- 
 ing of its corolla the mark of the hand of 
 God. 
 
 Corydalis lutea flourishes abundantly on our 
 old brick walls, clinging by preference to 
 the western aspect. Few things of the kind 
 please more than its sea-green, fern-like 
 foliage, so delicately made, yet richly full, 
 as to give the idea of masses of green sea- 
 foam. The little yellow flower-spike is 
 muffled up to the chin in its foamy leaves. 
 Such, at least, is the fashion of their growth 
 with us. 
 
 Mixed with lutea is a bunch or two of the 
 white variety. This is not native to the 
 garden ; it came from a nurseryman's packet 
 of seed. 
 
 Ground -ivy is another chief favourite. 
 The name ground-ivy is often misleading, 
 for we find visitors to the garden often call 
 the common ivy that is kept low under our 
 large trees " ground-ivy." Alehoof is also 
 its ungainly popular name, because formerly 
 used in the refining of ale. It is also used 
 as an infusion for inflamed eyes. Should 
 real ivy be used, however, by mistake, as 
 sometimes happens, the result is most painful. 
 194
 
 Weeds of the Garden 
 
 Ground-ivy has long been understood to 
 have the freedom of one special spot in our 
 garden. It is allowed to enring the ancient 
 sumach with a broad band of sapphire. 
 Before August has clothed the tree in beauty 
 with its own glowing inflorescence, many 
 things besides ground-ivy are there to dress 
 it or to creep around it. There are wild 
 primroses in spring, and self-sown berberis 
 decorates the bare stem with little yellow 
 balls. Nightshade, too, winding cautiously 
 about the time-worn trunk and crooked 
 branches, pushing out purple tassels all the 
 way as it climbs, arrives at last, and looks 
 out from the topmost leaves in a shower of 
 purple tipped with gold. Our nightshade is 
 not, I believe, the deadly dwale ; yet since it 
 has descended now to the lawn from its 
 position on the top of a high wall, where 
 it had flourished formerly for years, there 
 would seem to be certain fears about the 
 danger of its tempting berries. 
 
 It would be a disappointment if yellow 
 ladies'-bedstraw, or galium, came not in 
 its season, year by year, among the stones 
 around our sundial. The peculiar perfume 
 of it refreshes greatly, more especially if 
 mixed with honeysuckle. It is only in Scot- 
 land, I believe, where wild honeysuckle 
 blooms late, deep within woodland shades,
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 while yellow galium, with flowerstalks rising 
 a foot or more, makes gay the sunny banks 
 outside, that one can breathe this mixed 
 sweetness. Galium is far less vigorous of 
 growth here in the South, where, according 
 to Gerarde, " it wanders hither and thither 
 upon the ground, supporting its yellow spikes 
 upon the herbage or stones near at hand." 
 Red lamium, always rather coarse-looking, 
 is inclined to be a tiresome weed ; though 
 now and then it is impossible not to enjoy 
 the dash of red given suddenly by a cluster 
 of it at the edge of a border, in the grass, or 
 somewhere else where it ought not to be ; 
 a short-lived triumph, to be too quickly 
 ended as soon as the gardeners "come round." 
 Yellow nettle, weasel-snout, or as in Oxford- 
 shire, " dumb nettle " (Lamium gahobdolon), 
 steadfastly keeps its place in a little sunless 
 grassy bit at the foot of a north wall under 
 the stable clock. As a garden weed the 
 plant perhaps is rare. When it first appeared, 
 I believed it to be a herb of note, and at once 
 gave it welcome in the spot it chose, 
 amongst a few archangels (spared for their 
 beauty) and rambling potentilla. Yet the 
 yellow nettle is quite common in neighbour- 
 ing woods, where it contrasts cheerfully with 
 blue drifts of hyacinth. I know not why 
 dead nettle is " archangel," except for the 
 196
 
 Weeds of the Garden 
 
 purity of its velvet whiteness. In the 
 kitchen garden beside one of the gravel 
 walks, little red pimpernels or shepherd's 
 clock gaze up open-eyed at the sun in June. 
 These are lovely and beloved ; but never can 
 I forget the joy and pride of one day finding 
 at the edge of the turnip plot a solitary plant 
 of the azure-blue variety, Anagallis c<erulea. 
 The root was carefully marked with a stick, 
 but never did it flower any more. 
 
 Weeds belonging to that part of the 
 garden which once was cornfield should not 
 perhaps be reckoned among true garden 
 weeds. Yet one of them, at least, must not 
 be left out. Equisetum, or mare's-tail, is 
 possessed of rather a peculiar interest, if it 
 be, as I am told, the only living British re- 
 presentative of the carboniferous period. No 
 mention of this can I find in any of the usual 
 garden books consulted, and others were too 
 learned ; it is not named by Gerarde or by 
 Parkinson, nor do others say a word. Often 
 have I watched with interest our forests of 
 equisetum growing through the hard-rolled 
 gravel, or thronging narrow edges at the 
 foot of a paling that divides us from the 
 field. Of late these mimic mare's-tail forests 
 are observed to have diminished, and to-day, 
 at the end of May, the plant cannot be found 
 at all. Last autumn we saw a patch of it 
 197
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 looking like a fairy larch forest, near a field 
 path in the Highlands. The habitats of 
 equisetum lie far apart indeed. 
 
 The common Arum maculatum, the " Lords 
 and Ladies " of lanes and hedge-banks, is 
 another protected weed in my garden, 
 although by Paxton's dictum " it is a very 
 disagreeable flower, and hence they are not 
 favourites." The presence of it even in this 
 garden of strict protection is often misunder- 
 stood, and at times its ruined leaves are seen 
 in the weed-barrow. I think it to be one of 
 the most native of our wild garden friends. 
 Among its many country names are Silly loons 
 (in Somerset) and Cuckoo pint. Cuckoo 
 " quart " might well be named the great 
 species that grows under olive-trees and in 
 grassy places in the South of France, and 
 whose giant spathe is like a grocer's cornu- 
 copia of tissue paper. Some of these, that 
 I once brought home and planted in the 
 garden apple-border waned away entirely 
 after a few years, while plants of our smaller 
 English species at about the same time be- 
 came oftener seen. Arums do not get on 
 very well, either wild or in the garden. 
 Never have I beheld in the garden a single 
 one of their scarlet fruit-spikes, while in the 
 lanes and hedge-banks rarely does a single 
 spathe escape the busy hands of passing 
 198
 
 Weeds of the Garden 
 
 school children. Only last week I was 
 admiring the splendid green and luxuriant 
 growth of a great colony of arums under an 
 old clay-built wall, when by came the parish 
 hedger and cleared them all off, carefully 
 leaving in safety a huge bed of stinging 
 nettles. 
 
 An interesting little thing was for, I 
 think, it is now no more a minute pale 
 pink geranium which used to come in dry 
 hot summers on the hard gravel walks. 
 The height of it would be about half-an- 
 inch, and the utmost spread of its foliage 
 might almost cover a crown-piece. This 
 mite has, I fear, yielded at last to the per- 
 sistence of the garden roller. 
 
 Most lovely and most native among all 
 the natural weeds of the garden of which I 
 write are the wild white violets. Against 
 these there is no law. In February and 
 March the whole garden is white with them 
 in every part, and in the grass at the north- 
 east end and under the apple-trees you would 
 almost think there had been a hailstorm, so 
 white and thick the white violets lie. It is 
 only violets and wood strawberries that are 
 suffered to spread and multiply at will like 
 this. Without question violets are native to 
 the garden. It would seem that wild violets 
 wander more than other weeds, or else they 
 199
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 sooner tire of a given place. Their numbers 
 do not decrease, but many a fragrant patch 
 remembered well in orchard grass or else- 
 where about the garden has somehow dis- 
 appeared, to be found again in some quite 
 new locality. Wood strawberries were 
 brought home " for remembrance," from 
 the old grey walls of a little church in 
 Hampshire about a quarter of a century 
 ago. They seed now everywhere and are 
 welcome; and they forget not the old church 
 walls whence came their parent plant, and 
 will climb joyfully all among the Linaria 
 cymballaria or Mother of thousands, or 
 Wandering sailor to the top of our old 
 brick ivied buttresses, six feet high and more. 
 A little barren strawberry has been my pet 
 for years. For many years it has lived close 
 under the house wall, creeping up supported 
 by wild ivy, looking very pretty, with an 
 embroidery of humble little blossoms. And 
 only lately have I learnt that it is no straw- 
 berry at all, but Potentilla fragariastrum. 
 
 And so we come to wild things who have 
 made the garden their home, and yet who 
 do not seem to have naturally sprung there ; 
 they have been brought by birds, or have 
 come in a hundred ways. 
 
 Once, all over the kitchen garden, the 
 thorn apple (Datura stramonium] ran wild. 
 
 200
 
 Weeds of the Garden 
 
 It used to be too plentiful, though now quite 
 lost. I remember how beautiful it was, with 
 its large, pale-purple blossom, giving place 
 in season to the prickly fruit, in its turn 
 opening to scatter abroad its little black 
 seeds. Gradually as years went on and 
 care took the place of long neglect, it was 
 weeded away off the face of the land, and 
 now I am sorry ! They say datura was 
 used in the incantations and unlawful prac- 
 tices of witches ; also, no doubt, in some 
 places thorn apple is as it is said to be 
 a remnant of old ecclesiastical gardening, 
 although introduced from Constantinople, 
 Spain, or Italy, nor earlier, I believe, than 
 
 1597- 
 
 Milk-thistle (Carduus marianus} is another 
 departed weed from our garden, where it 
 formerly used to flourish. This also, with 
 its white-streaked leaves made lovelier by 
 a holier meaning that tradition gave was 
 once a favourite in convent gardens. Wher- 
 ever it now is found, when not recently 
 introduced, we may be sure its origin in 
 that place is in some way ecclesiastical. Our 
 milk-thistle has surely gone the way of 
 datura, and it will be seen no more in the 
 garden. These beautiful things are shy in 
 their own way, seeming well to understand 
 when they are not much wanted. Tansy, 
 
 201
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 with leafage " infinitely jagged and nicked 
 and curled withal like feathers " (so de- 
 scribed in Parkinson), has also, for reasons 
 of its own, quitted the garden ; and last 
 June a patch of it, avoided by the cows, 
 gave the sole touch of fresh green in all 
 our dried-up meadow. The day of a school 
 feast, a party of white-frocked little girls, 
 sitting in the midst of this fresh and brilliant 
 tansy busy tying up aromatic posies of its 
 emerald sprigs made a picture to be re- 
 membered. On the east side of the house, 
 close under the drawing-room windows, in a 
 sort of earth hem six inches wide, suddenly 
 appeared one summer a single plant of 
 Claytonia perfoliata, holding a flower-head 
 upright in the middle of its strange little 
 green saucer. Immediately it became a 
 favourite weed. We have had difficulties 
 in the matter of keeping it alive. There 
 was an under - gardener who persisted in 
 mowing it down. It did no harm in the 
 position it had chosen ; strict orders had 
 been given not to meddle with the little 
 plant ; yet whenever this unlucky youth's 
 turn came to tidy up, the Claytonia was sure 
 to be annihilated. Once I hurried to stand 
 guard over my weed as " Baggs," looking 
 dangerous, came near, and again forbade 
 him to touch it. Yet next morning it was 
 202
 
 Weeds of the Garden 
 
 cut as usual. Nothing will cure an unskilled 
 garden-labourer's ardour for destroying the 
 wrong thing. "Baggs" has long been a 
 thing of the past, and Claytonia perfoliata 
 now lives and multiplies in peace. 
 
 Close under an aged apple espalier for 
 several years past has flourished a splendid root 
 of wild wood hyacinth. Somehow, although 
 constantly increasing in size and in depth 
 of colour, it has never lost the thin spare 
 character of a true wild flower. Once on a 
 time there came a plant of twayblade. Dog 
 violets flower here and there like little 
 amethyst gems, and a new variety, very pale 
 in hue, has appeared. In the month of 
 May, wild hyacinth blue and white and 
 pink adopts the garden for its own. In 
 May, too, woodruffe makes sweet the air 
 in different parts of the garden. These 
 last, however, are weeds imported at some 
 period from elsewhere. 
 
 Late in June one becomes aware of the 
 slender, eager springing of ovens wherever 
 there is shade of shrubs or trees. I like to 
 see it, in moderation, and it suits well its 
 pretty names of " goldstar " and " erba bene- 
 detta," though certainly not unlike a tall, 
 mistaken buttercup. With small petals and 
 bunch of brown central stamens it makes but 
 little show. 
 
 203
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 Then there are what may be called na- 
 tional weeds weedy plants which are mostly 
 too inherent and native to the soil of every 
 English garden. Of these are the hateful 
 Summer cress ; and Shepherd's purse, with 
 its little heart-shaped satchels, so neat and 
 tidy-looking in its habit ; and Enchanter's 
 nightshade, which for all its magic name, is 
 a pest, and would fain, if we let it, annex 
 the garden altogether; and pink-flowered 
 willow-weed, which we should make much 
 of were it only rare ; and coltsfoot, which I 
 love. And in the garden orchard, as indeed, 
 wherever deep meadow grass is growing, all 
 over the country in the springtime of the 
 year, come those dear favourites of child- 
 hood, the innocent cuckoo-flowers, or Lady's 
 smock. Mistletoe has always been a lover 
 of this garden. The double lines of old 
 branching limes are tufted with it. Our old 
 apple-trees are green with mistletoe in 
 winter ; and lately young seedlings are seen 
 creeping up the stem of at least one young 
 apple-tree. I do not see that any harm is 
 done ; and how weirdly beautiful at Christ- 
 mastide is its dark green foliage set with 
 pearls ! Besides these and many more a 
 host of indistinguishable green things, which 
 I suppose have names. 
 
 And then the grasses ! As a matter of 
 204
 
 Weeds of the Garden 
 
 fact, one species alone belongs to the garden. 
 Bashaw-grass, the name by which I have 
 always known it, is conspicuous for its style 
 and stature. The real name, I suppose, is 
 Brome-grass, or barren brome-grass. The 
 other name must have been at some time 
 gained by its commanding height and ap- 
 pearance ; for the bashaw of dictionary is " a 
 tyrant ; a proud, imperious person.'* Yet, 
 notwithstanding its flaunting title, the whole 
 growth of this grass is instinct with perfect 
 grace. There could hardly be a better proof 
 of true taste in a gardener than that given 
 last summer, when a large tuft of bashaw- 
 grass was left on the edge of a shrubbery 
 tangle, just where yew and wild ivy meet 
 the lawn. All through autumn and winter, 
 the yellowing awns and sprays contrasted 
 well with the dark evergreen background. 
 A few common grasses crest some of our 
 old walls, mingling with yellow wallflower; 
 but they spring and fade, and come and go 
 with the changing year, and we seem to take 
 no heed of them. All over the lawns come, 
 too easily and too many, unsightly plan- 
 tains, and with them, sometimes, lovely 
 dark patches of very lowly thyme. Daisies 
 in their multitudes, of course, are continu- 
 ally snubbed. Their name is never heard or 
 alluded to ; but in the secret heart of me, I 
 205
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 love them ! I would have my lawn all white 
 with daisies (if only at the same time the 
 turf remained short and velvety!). To every 
 heart is dear the crimson edges of the little 
 simple flower ; for who can forget Tenny- 
 son's maiden whose footstep left the daisies 
 rosy, or Wordsworth's daisy, that " protects 
 the lingering dewdrop from the sun " ? 
 
 What happy thanks we owe to poets who 
 have crystallised for us in undying verse our 
 vague throbs of Nature-love ! 
 
 I can think of no more garden weeds, 
 either pets or enemies, native or imported, 
 unless the various agarics that autumn brings 
 may be so called. They come in shadowy 
 places under trees or in the shrubberies. To 
 me they are full of interest in their quiet 
 way, endless in variety, and some of them 
 marvellously made. We cannot boast any 
 grandly-coloured scarlet and orange species, 
 but in their own varied shades of brown or 
 lilac the beauty of our autumn toadstools 
 cannot be surpassed. 
 
 One, like a large dark brown or chocolate 
 mushroom, was found four years ago be- 
 tween the roots of a great oak in a meadow 
 near the garden fence. This curious growth 
 seemed something of a mystery, and was 
 despatched to me by post the day my gardener 
 discovered it. 
 
 206
 
 Weeds of the Garden 
 
 It was then, and still remains, as hard as 
 a bit of mahogany. It is as if the spirit of 
 the oak and his substance had passed into 
 the lowly fungus at his feet. One might 
 almost fancy some kind of occult affinity, in 
 the broad mushroom-like shape of the old 
 oak of four or five centuries from which it 
 sprang. It is said of the various kinds of 
 fungus arboreus that they have a venomous 
 faculty ; and they of the oak bring death. 
 
 Before altogether taking leave of weeds, a 
 word must be said about one of the prettiest 
 and most remarkable although not Eng- 
 lish. Oxalis cernuus is especially a garden 
 weed, for it is not seen in waste-ground. 
 During February and March, Riviera hotel 
 and villa gardens are gay with its bright 
 yellow flower. It covers the garden-beds 
 persistently to the discomfiture of gardeners, 
 and the sown grass is often full of it. Yet 
 it never seeds. Its manner of propagation is 
 kept to itself, and remains an impenetrable 
 mystery, impossible to unravel. Within the 
 last twenty-five years the coasts of Southern 
 France and Italy have been overrun, and it 
 has now crossed the sea and made itself at 
 home in Sicily. Experiments have been 
 made, and the fact appears established that 
 Oxalis cernuus does not ripen seed in Europe, 
 neither are the insects, bees, &c., necessary 
 207
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 for its propagation found in Europe. Yet 
 the increase is so enormous that in at least 
 one garden known to me, eight men were 
 employed daily in digging it up ; and still it 
 was not got rid of! This oxalis is a native 
 of the Cape, and it is common in the island 
 of Teneriffe. The yellow colour of it is 
 peculiarly fresh and beautiful, and the foot- 
 stalk not seldom rises from nine to eleven 
 inches in height, so full of life and vigour 
 is the plant. It is remarked to be very 
 particular about closing by four o'clock in 
 the afternoon. 
 
 It might certainly seem that the English 
 garden where we have wandered is but " a 
 dankish untoyled place," as old garden books 
 would say, after this long enumeration of 
 its weeds and fungi. Yet I think it is not 
 so badly kept after all. It might even be 
 a surprise to find there more flowers than 
 weeds ! 
 
 208
 
 XI 
 
 The Human Interest of a 
 Garden 
 
 Fancy's pictures, whose being is within the 
 mind, where our gardens are all our own.
 
 XI 
 
 The Human Interest of a 
 Garden 
 
 A MOST the best praise, perhaps, that 
 a garden may claim is said in six 
 words. Some one the other day, 
 alluding to a very lovely garden, 
 said, " It has such a human interest." 
 
 This " human interest," so far as one 
 understands the meaning of the phrase, is 
 wanting in many of the finest gardens. It 
 is a quality that always most strongly attracts, 
 although not every one is able to define it. 
 It is not easy to express, and may be better 
 described by what it is not. This " human 
 interest " is vainly sought in gardens where 
 thousands of begonias or geraniums brilliant 
 but soulless are grown under glass and 
 bedded out early in the summer. Little 
 pleasure is there in plants put out to make 
 a summer show, and after their day is done, 
 dug up, and thrown on the rubbish heap or 
 burnt. The system is heartless, though 
 sometimes perhaps necessary. 
 
 211
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 These, indeed, will make a good colour- 
 show for the time, but how dull, how scent- 
 less ! The place to which belong faultlessly 
 kept gravel walks between shrubberies of 
 clipped rhododendron ingeniously shaped 
 beds cut out on lawns tall tree-roses stand- 
 ing in plates on the grass, cheap, ill-designed 
 vases, and many another well-kept dulness 
 are all things without " human interest." 
 
 Let us turn away from them, and look at 
 the pictures that garden-love may from time 
 to time have graven on the heart. Call back 
 the remembrance of sweet flower-closes you 
 have seen, it may be long ago, or that you 
 may hope still at times to enjoy the happi- 
 ness of seeing. I do not think you will with 
 any real pleasure look back on very many 
 formal gardens made up of bedding out, or 
 even of the best " carpet bedding." But you 
 will remember with loving enjoyment some 
 dream of a place, with quiet lawns and per- 
 ennial borders, and surprises of bosky corners 
 and trimmed yews ; with spaces of wild wood- 
 land trees, looking out perhaps upon some 
 sunlit field or vista of blue distance. I think 
 the epithet taken for my " text " may partly 
 mean that everywhere about such gardens as 
 these one can feel the master's hand, though 
 the gardener's may in reality have done the 
 whole of the work. In such gardens there 
 
 212
 
 is no sameness of any kind ; no hateful 
 edgings of yellow-leaved pyrethrum, no hint 
 of a red garden, or a yellow, or a white one, 
 or any other of the fashionable singularities 
 of the day. Masses there will often be of 
 crimson antirrhinum, or double white stock 
 or purple iris, or of any other loveliness 
 wherever the right spot seems indicated. 
 Almost every plant in such a garden will be 
 individually cared for, tied up and supported 
 if weak, and the strong suffered to spread 
 abroad in their beauty, and encroaching weeds 
 kept far away. 
 
 The whole place is joy, not show. One 
 such garden I have known, nay, four or 
 five. Gardens both large and small ; size 
 is no matter. All are beautiful because all 
 are full of charm. As " the last taste of 
 sweet is sweetest last," so the latest garden 
 (a garden in Scotland), with plan of the 
 kind we are meaning, stands out clearest in 
 remembrance. . . . There is a broad turf 
 walk, which, passing through an opening in 
 a finely grown yew hedge, is lost beyond in 
 sunny lawns and the darkness of overshadow- 
 ing old yew-trees of age unknown ; for a yew 
 may live, they say, a thousand years. In 
 the midst is a fountain, half hidden in its 
 own diamond spray. Beyond the yew-tree 
 shadows the green walk resumes through a 
 213
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 second hedge and ends abruptly in a stone 
 seat under a grey, lichened wall. At the 
 back of the stone seat is trained a cherry- 
 tree, who in his season bears red luscious 
 cherries worthy to serve on golden salvers 
 for kings' tables. But it is not with the red 
 cherries lies the chief joy of the long turf 
 walk. It lies in the broad patterned band 
 of heart's-ease on either side, each length a 
 mosaic of richly varied colour. The purples 
 and deep blues and browns, and the yellows 
 of every shade of gold, and violas of purest 
 white (well-named " purity "). It is rather 
 hard to tell which is heart's-ease or which 
 pansy and which viola, they are so much 
 alike, and of late years have been so inter- 
 mixed. And this splendid feast of heart's- 
 ease will go on growing in perfection of 
 beauty all through the long summer months 
 it is a long delight, however, which no 
 garden may expect to attain south of the 
 Tweed. The haunting vision of that gold 
 and violet flower-mosaic reminds me of an 
 eccentric heart's-ease appearing last April in 
 my own English garden, a place where not 
 so much the tidy keeping, or wealth of 
 summer bloom delights as the strange 
 little vagaries, the whims and caprices that 
 come now and again among its inhabitants. 
 These are scarcely known to any but the 
 214
 
 Human Interest of a Garden 
 
 garden and myself; yet they are a continual 
 pleasure, and somehow the more observed 
 the oftener they seem to crop up here and 
 there about the garden. Such things as 
 poppies and daisies, and crimson snapdragons 
 changing to seed along the top of an old 
 brick wall, may look natural enough. They 
 seem to belong there ; " flowers in the 
 crannied wall." An extremely fine seedling 
 heart's-ease, growing on the face of the wall 
 is another thing, however. And this is how 
 we discovered it. 
 
 One morning the garden seemed more full 
 than ever of deep silence ; for, although far 
 on in the month of April, no April showers 
 as yet had blessed the earth, and no birds 
 sang ; the morning was gloomy and far too 
 windy and bitterly cold for song. As I was 
 pacing up and down a grass path outside the 
 high garden walls facing west, where was 
 found some slight shelter, memory went 
 back to the more genial springtimes of other 
 years, and sadly one felt the contrast. And 
 then a strange thing happened ! Suddenly a 
 little smiling face shone out to us from the 
 old bricks just one step away ! Out of the 
 bare wall at about a foot from the ground a 
 beautiful, large heart's-ease looked full at us 
 from a niche between two bricks. The 
 flower was as fine as could be seen anywhere. 
 215
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 Broad purple petals, deeply bordered round 
 in creamy white, the whole plant strong and 
 healthy, carrying leaf and flower and one 
 impatient bud all ready to open. How 
 possibly could a plant like this have filtered 
 through the thickness of the wall from its 
 sisters on the other side for on the other 
 side is the border of pansies or if not how 
 could the seed have been carried over by 
 bird or wind, and sown with such precision 
 in the tiny crevice where it grew and pros- 
 pered ? Many are the mysteries a garden 
 holds. Scarce a day during the next month 
 passed, that I did not visit my little friend ; 
 watched it till the round comely petals began 
 to lean over, and the flower bent itself down 
 and gave room for an exultant bud at its side 
 in due time to open out and take its place. 
 
 Amongst these curious whims and caprices 
 one of the strangest takes the form of a sort 
 of Bottle Imp. In the kitchen courtyard 
 of one of the great houses in Cheshire, a 
 narrow flower-border, time out of mind, had 
 been decorated with rows of empty bottles 
 of singular shape, planted in the earth neck 
 downwards. The lady of the hall heard or 
 read something about ferns found in these 
 planted bottles, so often seen in old cottage 
 gardens in that country. So she had some 
 of them pulled up. The necks were found 
 216
 
 Human Interest of a Garden 
 
 to be full of ferns ; living ferns of emerald 
 green. 
 
 One of these bottles was sent for me to 
 examine. The tiny ferns were of most deli- 
 cate growth, and they completely filled up 
 the neck of the bottle. The glass bottle 
 itself is of a kind that was in use, meant 
 probably to hold spirits, about seventy years 
 ago or more, but which is now no longer 
 made. The most curious thing is, that on 
 good authority it is said ferns now quite 
 unknown in those parts of England where 
 little ferneries of the kind survive, are found 
 within them as well as other ferns which 
 still are well known and common. More- 
 over, it is said that within the space of 
 twelve months any glass bottle whatever, 
 planted in the earth neck downwards, will 
 also become filled with ferns. I have not 
 heard whether the truth of this has as yet 
 been tested. One more " light turn of 
 fancy" among garden flowers must be told, 
 though it had a sad ending. 
 
 In a garden I knew, there was an old 
 hedge of Cotoneaster Simonii over five or 
 six feet high, and over a hundred yards in 
 length, following up alongside a rather steep 
 walk to the top of the garden, where it ends 
 abruptly at a sundial and cross walk. Just 
 here at the end of the hedge a rose had 
 217
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 chosen to ensconce herself midway among 
 the tangle ; for several years the hermit rose 
 dwelt apart, secretly, and safe from harm ; 
 ever growing taller and stronger. I know 
 not if any save myself, who from time to 
 time had watched her progress, knew of her 
 existence ; least of all did the gardener 
 know. At last the hour came. One late 
 June morning I was in the garden, and on 
 reaching the upper end of the hedge, sud- 
 denly was aware of a new loveliness shining 
 among the old, dark, Cotoneaster leaves. 
 The rose had uplifted herself above the level 
 of the hedge, and there she was, blooming 
 in perfect beauty, enthroned upon its rugged 
 age in the joy of her own sweet triumph. 
 I cannot tell what variety of rose, and it 
 matters not ; the flower was there, in colour 
 like as one dreams of a Rose. Something 
 about it reminded me of the old-fashioned, 
 long - neglected cabbage rose ; bright and 
 glowing, breathing around a breath of purest 
 incense. I gazed at the vision a little time, 
 reflecting on how the long, brave upward 
 struggle of the rose had been finished at last, 
 crowned with complete success. 
 
 That evening some friends came with us 
 
 into the garden. They came especially to 
 
 see the rose, but they never saw it ; for alas ! 
 
 when we arrived there, it was gone. The 
 
 218
 
 Human Interest of a Garden 
 
 gardener had been there with his cruel shears : 
 amongst the clippings and rubbish was just 
 a shred or so of rose-pink and fresh green 
 that was all. The whole of my poor rose 
 had been grubbed. It was for ever lost and 
 every remnant cleared away. . . . 
 
 I am afraid I almost hated that gardener 
 after that. 
 
 From such a ruthless scene, it is heart- 
 felt satisfaction, turning to the rich bloom 
 and happy irregularity of another garden I 
 know ; also, a garden in June. For the first 
 moment, as one opens the gate to enter, the 
 flash and flare of a legion of great Oriental 
 poppies fairly dazzles with scarlet brilliancy. 
 Like George Herbert's rose, it " bids the 
 rash gazer wipe his eyes." They grow along 
 a border in the middle of the garden. The 
 effect of all this glare of living scarlet is 
 nothing less than splendid. And then all 
 along one side of the garden there is the 
 pure freshness and charm of white and pink 
 foxglove, self-sown, almost wild. The 
 garden walls at the back of the foxgloves 
 belong of right to a few old apple and plum 
 trees, which make a leafy background for the 
 richly-coloured flowers, they are far too old 
 to mind. These foxgloves shoot up in 
 pink or snowy spires, some of them six feet 
 high. They seed year after year, growing 
 219
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 of their own wild will, and there's none to 
 say them nay. It is indeed a long array of 
 beauty ! Like a fair company of lovely 
 damsels, straight and tall, marching together 
 up the garden. 
 
 But I think I am tired of so much garden 
 talk. The world, too, tires of it. Let us 
 shut the garden gate and stray out into the 
 pleasant fields. . . . 
 
 220
 
 XII 
 
 Art Education 
 
 I 
 
 What is Art ? And which are they that 
 will know the soul of her ?
 
 XII 
 
 Art Education 
 I* 
 
 MORE than seven hundred years ago 
 a little company of thirteen monks 
 separated themselves from the 
 Benedictine convent of St. Mary, 
 in the north of England, in order to join 
 the Cistercian rule, whose discipline was 
 more severe and whose reputed sanctity 
 greater. Thurstan, Archbishop of York, 
 himself leaning towards the Cistercians, 
 encouraged these men in their ascetic aspira- 
 tions. He absolved them from their vows ; 
 and on a day of midwinter, in 1132, they 
 went forth for ever from the house where 
 life had become too smooth and easy for 
 their souls' health. A portion of wild and 
 desolate land was given to them, in the 
 narrow valley of the Skell, along which the 
 river rushes, clear and strong. Here the 
 monks found a great elm and a grove of 
 
 * An Address read before a Somerset School of Art 
 (since entitled " School of Science and Art "), Novem- 
 ber 20, 1870. 
 
 223
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 seven yew-trees, and here, as tradition tells, 
 they abode for days and weeks and months, 
 even for the space of two years. Through 
 those long winters they had no other shelter. 
 They drank of the quick-running Skell ; 
 and for food they caught the fish that swam 
 in its waters, and gathered the roots and 
 herbs that grew near its banks. At night 
 they knelt upon the ground to pray. They 
 wrapped their coarse monks' garments about 
 them, and lay down in peace to sleep under 
 the trees. The thick branches spread between 
 them and the stars. Through frost and 
 snow, amid driving rain and biting winds, 
 they sought no other roof. Hunger and 
 cold they suffered, but they swerved not 
 from their purpose ; their faith and their 
 endurance failed not ; whilst, day by day, 
 in deep solitude and meditation, they read 
 in the book that ever lay spread open before 
 them. The forest fretwork of branches 
 overhead, and the tapestry of autumn leaves 
 under their feet, the music of the winds of 
 heaven, and tender harmonies of opal fires 
 that pass across the sky at moonrise, the 
 golden and the scarlet clouds that wait 
 about the rising and the setting sun, with 
 all the strange poetry of Nature, grew into 
 their souls. And ever before them rose a 
 glorious vision of a holy place, a temple 
 224
 
 Art Education 
 
 to the living God, which they should build 
 up, there, on the margin of the swift river. 
 
 Doubt not but that they saw it stand. 
 When evening fell, and in the pale morning 
 mist yea, even when the sun arose in his 
 strength, in prophetic dream they saw its 
 mighty shadow, lying broad and black be- 
 tween the rocks. And well can I believe 
 that though in their flesh they might not 
 behold the day of its finished greatness, yet 
 in spirit those poor monks paced the arched 
 cloisters and long pillared aisles ; while, oft- 
 times, in their ears they heard low chaunt- 
 ings of unearthly sweetness. And so they 
 waited in patience and in hope, in sore need 
 likewise, till the winter of their exile passed 
 into spring, a spring of new life and power. 
 For after two years were ended, the good 
 St. Bernard, touched by the story of their 
 steadfastness, sent them messengers with help, 
 and they began to build. They quarried 
 the rocks of their valley ; they spared not 
 themselves in toil. And as no hardships 
 had dulled their ardour, so neither difficulty 
 nor danger daunted them ; but through all 
 their lives they laboured. And when they 
 fell asleep, the work was continued after 
 them by other hands. Thus, stone by stone, 
 was raised up one of the most magnificent 
 of those great churches which in past days 
 225 p
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 of piety and enthusiasm ever more and more 
 enriched our country, to the praise and glory 
 of God. 
 
 In Skelldale to this day there stand two 
 ruins, witnesses connected with the old tra- 
 dition of those thirteen monks. One, a yew- 
 tree of immense size, sole survivor of the 
 Seven Sisters (so the group of trees was 
 named by the country people). Hollow the 
 ancient trunk is, yet vigorous still. Its 
 boughs heavy with dark masses of foliage, 
 and bearing year after year its accustomed 
 ornament of scarlet fruit. The other is the 
 tower and noble remnant of a church and 
 abbey. Grand in the profound silence and 
 stillness of its utter decay, the building, 
 though not so old by centuries, is a ruin yet 
 more complete ; it is more truly nothing but 
 the broken outline of itself than even that 
 hollow yew-tree, with " its thousand years 
 of gloom." Enough remains, however, of 
 Fountain's Abbey for us to know somewhat 
 of its former beauty and state. Enough, 
 after Time with human ignorance and 
 stupidity, yet more fatal than Time itself 
 had done its worst. Delicate interlacing 
 arches and slender shafts may still be seen 
 there. Sculptured capitals, set now in the 
 green grass, instead of crowning, as once they 
 did, fair pillars of stone or granite. Lofty, 
 226
 
 Art Education 
 
 arched windows, and great piers and buttresses 
 of massy strength ; enough remains to teach 
 us many a lesson in architecture, although 
 the men who gave vitality to those once 
 ordered stones were untrained, if not un- 
 learned men. The master builders simply 
 and earnestly worked out that which they 
 knew and felt, not considering which style 
 of architecture they should choose, for they 
 knew but one. Each workman, free to follow 
 the teaching of his own fancy, carved his 
 capitals and corbels of his arches with tran- 
 scripts of the wild flowers and forest leaves 
 that grew around him. The thing came 
 naturally to him, and it was done with a fire 
 and truth to which, alas ! we in these cold 
 modern times can hardly attain. And thus, 
 with a generous binding together of work- 
 manship, both rude and finished, but all of 
 it the best that each man could give, a church 
 was built whose very ruins are studied by us 
 with reverence and wonder. In the times 
 to which we are now looking back, Art and 
 Religion went hand in hand, so that one 
 can scarcely be spoken of apart from the 
 other. 
 
 There lived in Italy, about the first half 
 
 of the fourteenth century, a holy man whose 
 
 story, I think, is familiar to all. I mean that 
 
 painter-monk, whose whole existence was one 
 
 227
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 great devotion to his Art and, through Art, 
 to God. A man whose life from earliest 
 youth was stainless to the end ; who went in 
 and shut the door of his cell, and, kneeling 
 upon his knees, with prayer and fasting pre- 
 pared himself before ever he began to paint 
 a picture. An artist who believed each line 
 he drew was heaven-inspired ; who painted 
 saints and angels with the immortal bloom 
 and the pure joy of Paradise glowing in 
 divinest beauty upon their faces, their gar- 
 ments of azure and purple shaped in folds of 
 heavenly grace, as they danced amid the roses 
 and the palms of Eden. Colour was to him 
 an exquisite delight, almost a religion ; and 
 only by jewelled backgrounds of purest gold 
 could he strive to glorify his visions of the 
 just, with a faint conception of the marvellous 
 light of God. Fra Angelico, whose work 
 indeed was priceless, never received money 
 for his labour. His custom was humbly 
 to take from the prior of his convent the 
 brethren's orders for whatever sacred picture 
 they desired. So that at last every cell be- 
 came a shrine for some holy subject, traced 
 by his hand upon the wall, an offering to his 
 Divine Master. That cloister of St. Mark at 
 Florence is thrown open now ; you can go 
 where you please through its long corridors 
 and galleries ; you may look from the window 
 228
 
 Art Education 
 
 of the great empty library, through a green 
 veil of vine leaves into the sunny court, with 
 its marble well, its artichokes, and lavender 
 and orange trees. All pretty much now as 
 it was then. And you may peer into the 
 empty cells, neatly white-washed and quite 
 empty, save for the precious square foot or 
 two of fresco that remains in each one on 
 the wall, close beside the tiny casement, just 
 where the inmate of the cell could see it from 
 his pillow when morning broke. When I 
 was there in the year 1867, the monks were 
 all dispersed, except five or six, who haunted 
 still the passages and cloisters. One of 
 them, a feeble old man of eighty, would 
 tell one, " I have lived here for fifty years ; 
 if they sent me away now, whither should 
 I go?" 
 
 The stories of the builders of Fountain's 
 Abbey and of the monk of Fiesole, amongst 
 many others, have occurred to me specially 
 to show the wide difference between the 
 spirit of Art in mediaeval times and in 
 our own day. Names of genius and of 
 power far surpassing theirs might have been 
 brought before you. Other men of old time 
 there were ; great workers whose histories 
 are familiar to us from our youth. Names 
 such as Albert Dttrer, the goldsmith's son of 
 Nuremberg, and hisfellow-citizen Adam Kraft, 
 229
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 the mason, in whose hands hard stone became 
 as wreaths of living leaves and flowers ; Leon- 
 ardo da Vinci, whose genius was so catholic 
 that in literature, music, engineering and 
 geometrical science he excelled as greatly as 
 in " the dumb poetry of art," and who was 
 the first to establish a school of design in his 
 own country. Leonardo's contemporary, 
 Filipepi (called Sandro Botticelli), whose 
 art had its own quiet but unmistakable 
 influence. The catalogue of names might 
 be endless. From remote ages of antiquity 
 have come down to us works, such as those 
 which in their decay remain still beautiful 
 on the shores of Greece, or such as the Pont 
 de Gard in the south of France ; models of 
 strength, of beauty joined with perfect fitness 
 for their purpose. Illustrations present them- 
 selves without number to prove that, on the 
 Continent as in England, Art was once, so to 
 speak, spontaneous. 
 
 I believe that all truth, whether of paint- 
 ing or sculpture, demands a certain single- 
 mindedness and childlike character (very hard 
 to find, alas! in the nineteenth century), 
 joined with an intense, though perhaps un- 
 conscious, love of Nature. In the Middle 
 Ages they had time, which we have not. 
 There was then no straining after Art. The 
 old builders of cathedrals, palaces, and towns, 
 230
 
 Art Education 
 
 in simplicity and faith laboured to render the 
 thoughts that were in them. As has been 
 remarked of the writings of one of our great 
 poets, so we may say of mediaeval Art ; it 
 was not so much a particular faculty as the 
 general result of vigorous and enthusiastic 
 minds expressing themselves in that way. 
 They knew not, and they cared not, if any 
 before them had done the like ; only they 
 strained each nerve, and set their faces to the 
 work, until every obstacle was overcome. 
 Even so we may read in the dreary old Mol- 
 davian legend, of how the marble tower, 
 having been overthrown nine times by un- 
 toward spirits of the air, at last stood, strong 
 and beautiful. The builders won, because 
 with joy they gave their hearts' blood in the 
 contest ; because they obeyed the awful vision 
 which bade them build up a human life 
 within the wall. Thought and power of 
 expression arising thus without effort, spon- 
 taneously, academies of art and schools of 
 design were unlike, unneeded and unknown. 
 They were as little needed in Europe then as 
 now in the East. Culture and civilisation 
 would seem to have created a necessity, unfelt 
 in the lands of the sun Persia, India, China 
 nations where all things have always been 
 the same for thousands of years ; where in 
 design, arrangement of colour, and surpass- 
 231
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 ing delicacy of workmanship, there is nothing 
 to be learnt. No teaching could improve 
 the shape of a common Hindoo drinking- 
 cup, or brass lotah, for example ; nor the in- 
 tricate fancy of the patterns in black and red, 
 daily painted on wooden boxes by ignorant 
 Burmese, sitting on the ground at the doors 
 of their hovels. Half-starved natives from 
 the hills can fashion, with their own untaught 
 instinctive grace, European gold and silver 
 coins into bracelets and brooches ; years of 
 learning at South Kensington could never 
 cause the weaving of one shade of more har- 
 monious tint in the threads of a Persian 
 carpet, nor suggest one whit more richly 
 perfect design in the looms of Cashmere, or 
 the gold embroideries of Delhi. A life's 
 education could in nowise better the ivory 
 carvings, the brilliant bird and butterfly por- 
 trayings of the Chinese, nor the fine grotesque 
 of their porcelain monsters. It is the same 
 with all those Eastern nations, who have not 
 known progress ; in a less degree, also, of 
 out-of-the-way European peoples. But with 
 us it is otherwise. 
 
 The decline of Art, which began about 
 the period of the Reformation, and the diffi- 
 culties we must struggle with in feeling after 
 its true spirit, are partly, perhaps, the price 
 to be paid for our enormous advance in 
 232
 
 Art Education 
 
 Science. Religious enthusiasm, although it 
 went for much, can hardly have been the sole 
 moving spirit of Art in past times. You 
 have but to pass along the street of almost 
 any country town or village in England 
 here in Somersetshire, for instance, in this 
 town of Frome and look up at the many 
 old houses that remain, to feel that good 
 design must once have come naturally to us. 
 These gabled houses were doubtless built by 
 the common masons of the place ; yet how 
 quaintly pleasant are they to look upon ! In 
 many places they are really beautiful, with 
 ornamental timbers, carved stone doorways, 
 mullioned windows, groups of twisted chim- 
 neys, and always the characteristic high- 
 pitched roof. Far down in country lanes 
 and fields, throughout the length and breadth 
 of England, old cottages are scattered here 
 and there, whose picturesqueness seems to 
 prove how easy a thing cottage architecture 
 used to be. Nowadays I believe it is found 
 less hard to design a palace ! Many a choice 
 bit of what we call true English scenery must 
 at this moment be present to your mind. 
 You must have been often charmed by the 
 steep moss-grown thatch of an old cottage at 
 some corner of a sunny common, or at some 
 turn of a green lane, overhung by tall elm- 
 trees, or niched in its own small wilderness 
 2 33
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 of old-fashioned cabbage-roses and white 
 lilies a thing always to be remembered with 
 pleasure. 
 
 It was, I believe, only within these last 
 twenty years or so, that people seemed to 
 find out how exceedingly ugly most of their 
 modern things were. Everything in which 
 there was design at all was badly designed. 
 Mr. Ruskin had already begun to write 
 wonderful books, full of thoughts upon Art, 
 which were new to everybody ; and to rouse 
 people up to a sense of the ugliness sur- 
 rounding them. There was also, as we all 
 know, another influence at work, never un- 
 felt, though at the time almost unacknow- 
 ledged. That was the influence of the Prince 
 Consort. 
 
 And so at last, our eyes being opened, we 
 began to amend our ways. Schools of Art 
 were established one by one throughout the 
 Kingdom. The first were founded in 1 842 ; 
 two in London and York ; three in the three 
 great centres of manufactural industry 
 Birmingham, Manchester, and Spitalfields. 
 Since that date the number of schools has 
 gradually increased to 107, in which during 
 the past year 19,864 students had received 
 instruction. Our own school of Art at Frome 
 holds no unworthy place in the yearly Govern- 
 ment reports : a better place indeed than 
 234
 
 Art Education 
 
 that of most other towns of the same size. 
 I have no fears now that it will not well 
 maintain its position, and go on increasing 
 in honour and success. Art education is 
 deemed by the Government of the country 
 of such deep importance that all possible 
 encouragement is held out. Large sums of 
 money are annually expended in aids of all 
 kinds, last year exceeding ,49,000. Night 
 classes have increased in four years from 32 
 to 249, giving instruction in drawing to 
 9322 pupils. The elementary schools for 
 children of the poor are a peculiarly inter- 
 esting feature of the movement. In them 
 the good that must be worked by the re- 
 fining power of study in this direction cannot 
 be over-rated. These last-named schools in- 
 crease most rapidly, and during the past year 
 more than 120,000 poor children have been 
 taught drawing. 
 
 The advantages of local schools of Art are 
 clear ; a mason or a carpenter who can draw 
 rises to the rank of a carver in stone or 
 wood. The workman learns something of 
 design, which enables him to get higher 
 wages. In every successful school such in- 
 stances are most frequent. And not merely 
 firmness of touch and ability in drawing 
 freely and correctly, or accuracy in joining 
 and moulding, are to be obtained. The 
 235
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 chief aim must always be what has been 
 called " the freedom of the workman " ; 
 and this, by education of the eye, in teaching 
 it to see (seeing justly, being in truth an 
 acquirement) ; of the hand, in training it to 
 copy form of every kind ; of the mind, in 
 learning to observe and to know good from 
 evil in Art. Thus, after long and perse- 
 vering toil, is gained that power to invent 
 beautiful combinations of form and colour 
 known as applied design. 
 
 It is the happy gift of design, thus pain- 
 fully obtained, that I feel sure be it never 
 so low in degree must light up the work- 
 man's life with a new brightness. It is, I 
 believe, as the delight of an added sense ; 
 for no day can be wholly colourless that has 
 been marked by some interest of inven- 
 tion. 
 
 When the first rules of perspective and 
 the principles of light and shade and reflec- 
 tion have been mastered, and the student 
 begins to draw from Nature, he will find 
 how endless are the suggestions he receives 
 from her. From studies in all manner of 
 plants and flowers ; from observation of the 
 growth of trees ; in the careful following 
 with pencil or brush of the lovely forms 
 of trailing ivies and bending grasses ; in 
 studying the outlines of mantling hedge- 
 236
 
 Art Education 
 
 plants, which in summer need no seeking, 
 so abundantly do they spring about our 
 path, these suggestions that arise continu- 
 ally will be to him invaluable. 
 
 And here I may remark how these wild 
 field-growths are more useful to the student 
 than is the greater luxuriance of cultivated 
 ground. There is in them more individu- 
 ality, more feeling, if one may say so ; less 
 fully rounded they may be, but their very 
 meagreness is full of character. Just as a 
 tree that has space to spread its branches 
 evenly all round in a sheltered spot is good 
 as a type of tree-beauty, yet is not so de- 
 lightful to paint as one that has had to 
 struggle for life on a bleak hill-side. As 
 sometimes one sees the bole of a beech-tree 
 run up branchless to a great height, polished 
 smooth and silvery white with the rough 
 winds' constant buffeting ; or as an oak, 
 rugged and stag-headed, its gnarled trunk 
 may be all aslant, yet bearing, somehow, 
 that look of the main root working right 
 down all the deeper into the earth, from the 
 winter storms that have raged about its head. 
 Look at the veining of a wild ivy-leaf, and 
 see how far more distinctly marked and rich 
 in colour it is than is the dark, uniform 
 green of the same leaf when grown in a 
 garden. Look at the delicate cutting out 
 237
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 of the scarlet-tinted leaves of crane's-foot or 
 wild geranium. And again, the wild straw- 
 berry ; that little plant as it creeps over dry 
 banks and diapers the ground under the 
 trees in almost every coppice and nutty 
 woodland hollow, is about the sweetest of 
 all for suggestion of design ; with leaf and 
 flower and fruit all in season together. Then 
 for colour : there is more to be gained in a 
 winter's walk between the hedgerows of any 
 of our Somersetshire lanes than they who 
 have not eyes to see could well believe. 
 Many a lesson in colour you may find in 
 the old bare hedges, with their soft shades 
 of grey and brown, their purple bramble- 
 sprays, and here and there a dash of gold, 
 where some autumn leaf, forgotten by the 
 winds, still quivers on its stalk more to be 
 learnt here, I think, than in the best-kept 
 pleasure-ground . 
 
 And to the classes who do not work for 
 their bread the school of Art renders no 
 less service. Those students who have much 
 talent for drawing are set in the right direc- 
 tion, and those who have little are taught 
 to make the most of it. While the habit 
 of observation, gained by copying natural 
 objects, creates or fosters that sympathy with 
 and that love of Nature which is, without 
 doubt, the healthiest and most enduring of 
 238
 
 Art Education 
 
 all enjoyments, giving a charm that nothing 
 else can give, to country life for 
 
 " Nothing is lost to one that sees 
 
 With the eye that feeling gave ; 
 To him there's a story in every breeze, 
 And a picture in every wave." 
 
 No one who has ever made a careful 
 drawing from Nature of flower or leaf, or 
 lines of wood and hill, can fail afterwards to 
 find how the effort has enabled him to enjoy 
 tenfold the beauty of all other leaves and 
 flowers and wooded hills. 
 
 One other claim on our sympathies may 
 be mentioned, as noted in these words in a 
 former report of the Committee of Council 
 on Education. " Containing, as does the 
 School of Design, students of all ranks and 
 classes, without separation or exclusiveness, 
 and giving to all the same real and severe 
 instruction, I believe it is producing a good 
 result, far wider in its effects than the mere 
 tuition it imparts." 
 
 Already an abundant harvest has been 
 reaped from these schools, apart from those 
 other nobler fruits whose growth is less 
 obvious, and their ripening slower; some 
 there are which, as being supposed to come 
 within a woman's comprehension, I may be 
 allowed to indicate here. Such, for example, 
 as the improved taste in jewellery and orna- 
 239
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 ments of gold and silver-work ; the excell- 
 ence of patterns and shades of colour of the 
 silks and satins and ribbons now woven for 
 our personal adorning ; and the chintzes, 
 wall-papers, muslin curtains, carpets, china, 
 and such-like things wherewith we adorn 
 our rooms. If we recall for a moment the 
 image of certain melancholy mahogany side- 
 boards, of sad-coloured moreen curtains, of 
 the paper-hangings covered with dull mean- 
 ingless scrolls, that we all at one time lived 
 with so contentedly, and compare them with 
 the rich variety of well-designed furniture 
 now in common use, the change a few years 
 have made will be apparent. Indeed, so 
 many hitherto unthought-of forms of natural 
 objects are now made use of, that there is 
 some danger lest we tire altogether of them. 
 I am afraid ferns, swallows, stars, humming- 
 birds, peacocks' feathers, shells, and count- 
 less other beautiful things are becoming 
 almost wearisome by their continual repeti- 
 tion in ornamental design. If we turn to 
 our gardens, there also the school of Art 
 has indirectly been at work. You may trace 
 it in the massing of colours and in their 
 harmonious arrangement, in the contrasting 
 of flowers of dazzling brilliance with sober- 
 hued or dead-white leaves. The idea of 
 what in former days used to be known as 
 240
 
 Art Education 
 
 "an English garden," that dimly-remembered 
 maze of winding walks and shaded turf and 
 borders of tangled sweetness, is almost lost 
 (as most gardeners think it should be ! ) in 
 the modern parterre. A garden is, in these 
 days, little more than a mosaic of splendid 
 colours laid in settings of browns and reds. 
 
 So true is it that a really powerful influ- 
 ence, of whatever kind, is perceived not only 
 in that which is immediately connected with 
 itself, but grows and spreads from the centre 
 in ever-widening circles, as concentric rings 
 are seen to overspread the surface when a 
 stone is thrown into a pool of water. 
 
 I must not longer take up your time with 
 these thoughts. I offer them in all humility, 
 knowing them to be somewhat crude and 
 unfinished. 
 
 241
 
 Art Education 
 II
 
 Art Education 
 II* 
 
 IT is a long interval since November 
 1870, twenty-nine years ago almost 
 to a day, when I last met this School 
 of Art. The interval has been full of 
 inevitable change of changes in all direc- 
 tions. A small number belonging to those 
 days are met once more on this similar 
 occasion. They will not forget how, on 
 that evening so many years ago, there were 
 present with us some who are now away 
 friends and noble characters whose absence 
 makes life poorer for us. We that remain 
 do not fail to recognise how difficult it is to 
 keep pace with the times. Twenty-nine or 
 thirty years give ample time for the old order 
 of things to pass and for new to take their 
 place ; and the changes, as you know, on 
 every side are larger and more far-spreading 
 than perhaps we could then have imagined 
 possible. To glance back in one direction 
 
 * An Address read before the same Somerset School of 
 Science and Art, November 30, 1899. 
 
 245
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 only in 1870 it had hardly begun to be 
 thought at all right that women should let 
 their voice be heard in public, or perhaps 
 only just for a word or two So well under- 
 stood was this at the time, that I recollect it 
 was considered incorrect for me on the even- 
 ing in question to read myself, the address I 
 had prepared. It had to be read aloud for 
 me. There's a strong contrast between then 
 and now, and we women are not any longer 
 careful to keep silence. . . . Thirty years 
 ago a women's congress, or bicycles, or a 
 thousand social changes which have so much 
 increased the independence and amusements 
 of our lives were as yet undreamed. Every- 
 where things go on faster and faster, and 
 these closing years of the century (1899) 
 are charged with a sense of fulness and 
 strange unrest and hurry. 
 
 Little need is there for allusion to the 
 century's latest terrible development the 
 crash of War ; for the engrossing thought 
 to every one of us is, I believe, " the War " ; 
 so much so as to make it well-nigh impos- 
 sible to give individual attention to any other 
 theme. 
 
 The subject of Art, however, amongst a 
 
 crowd of other subjects that fill the mind, 
 
 has to be faced. It is a theme so immense, 
 
 in its way so vast, that to deal with only a 
 
 246
 
 Art Education 
 
 little bit of it seems a serious undertaking. 
 And first let me ask the Science students 
 present to believe that if I do not allude to 
 their special department, it is simply because 
 I am more ignorant of Science than of modern 
 Art. Science and Art are sisters, with the 
 difference that while the world might get on, 
 however wearily, without the Fine Arts, 
 without Science we should be nowhere. 
 Where Science is subservient to Art, there 
 is an indispensable connection between the 
 two. I have read that the sculptor still finds 
 it necessary to attend most accurately to 
 chemical details in the composition of his 
 bronze ; and we know that the painter and 
 the photographer supplement each other's 
 work. More than this I dare not hazard, 
 for fear of getting out of my depth as a 
 sciolist. If change during the past years 
 has so strongly affected our daily life, what 
 shall be said of the advance in Art ? The 
 difference between painting as it is practised 
 now, and as it was a generation back, between 
 the new methods and the old, is so wide, so 
 marked, that we of the older time hardly 
 know where we are. We have lost touch 
 with it. When I attempt to understand 
 modern pictures, as a rule I don't. It has 
 been stated lately as a fact, that a three- 
 volume novel can be composed and printed 
 247
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 in the space of three weeks ; and, I believe, in 
 the latest style of portrait-painting that a 
 portrait can be taken from life and finished 
 in two sittings. Under conditions such as 
 these, how can it be within our powers to 
 keep in touch with any of the Arts? We 
 feel out of the running. Thus it would 
 have been a relief could I have asked and 
 obtained your permission to stay away and 
 to say nothing at all about Art to-night. 
 Since, however, this may not be, I promise 
 to shorten, all I can, a few necessary remarks. 
 There is no question but that a very long 
 step has been taken in the technical part of 
 painting. Where formerly the many diffi- 
 culties of that kind seemed often to be almost 
 insuperable, it is to-day, for the most part, 
 a comparatively easy task to learn to draw 
 with sufficient correctness. So smooth, in- 
 deed, is now the path to success in this, that 
 I think it is too often half- forgotten that 
 painting is, in reality, the hardest thing in 
 the world. It was said by one of our first 
 painters, when he was at the top of his pro- 
 fession, " Art may seem an easy thing to 
 some people ; but it is so difficult that even 
 the most successful men have felt appalled 
 at the hugeness of their difficulties." I 
 think that Sir John Millais alluded at the 
 time to technical difficulties only. He left 
 248
 
 Art Education 
 
 on one side Inspiration, without which Art 
 is valueless, and that the best of beauty is a 
 finer charm than the best rules of Art can 
 ever teach. 
 
 In proportion to the undoubted progress 
 in some directions, so, I fear, is the tide far 
 slower set towards the best and highest aims, 
 towards that patient following of Nature for 
 love of Nature's truth, which for every 
 student should be the mark they want to hit. 
 We hear a little too much in these days of a 
 word which formerly was hardly in being in 
 the sense in which it is now so constantly 
 used. I mean the word " effect," in relation 
 to the impression produced by some school 
 of painting in fashion at the moment. It 
 means that the drawing is done in the manner 
 of the French Impressionists, or any other 
 school, rather than giving the true " effect " 
 of Nature. There is no kind of merit in an 
 effect of the sort. Turner never tried for 
 that ; nor Claude, nor Poussin, nor any of 
 the best Old Masters. 
 
 Work achieved by trying to represent (not 
 imitate there is a difference) the charm of 
 some aspect of Nature, to embody some 
 beautiful thought, must at all times be more 
 plain, more legible, so to speak, than that 
 which nowadays so often contents the artist, 
 namely, a strange or even a blank "effect." 
 249
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 For painting should always be the universal 
 language. It speaks a language which all 
 can understand. All Nature is creation's 
 picture-book. Painting only can describe 
 everything that can be seen by the eye. 
 " Art reaches back to the babyhood of time ; 
 it is man's only lasting monument." The 
 Impressionists have made a strong impres- 
 sion (I mean no pun) on the work of a large 
 proportion of English artists. The works 
 of most of them I do not profess to under- 
 stand ; but I think in them we are meant 
 to believe that a muddle of nothing looks 
 like something ! None would deny that 
 it is most useful to make a habit of putting 
 down, with brush or chalk or anything at 
 hand, a note or first quick impression of 
 it may be a group of trees, or a turn in the 
 road, or a passing figure, or whatever may 
 strike you or rather I would say whatever 
 you feel you must paint say, on looking out 
 of the window. But to create a picture 
 that first impression should surely be after- 
 wards delicately worked out in parts, in 
 order to give strength and substance and a 
 sense of sincerest truth to the whole. It 
 is an insult to the spectator's intelligence to 
 be told, for instance, that a clever smudge 
 of dark upon dirty white is " a windy heath," 
 or that a patch of bald crude green, with a 
 250
 
 Art Education 
 
 greyish object in the midst, is meant for 
 " an apple-tree in grass." Yet one has seen 
 crude daubs bearing such-like titles honour- 
 ably hung even in the Royal Academy at 
 Burlington House an institution, by the 
 way, which seems to be so fast becoming 
 little else save a vain show of all that is 
 false in feeling and in colour, of a multitude 
 of canvases which (with a few fine excep- 
 tions) give pleasure to none which seem 
 hung there upon the walls solely to make 
 the vulgar stare. There must then, I sup- 
 pose, exist some points of hidden excellence 
 in such works, points unperceived by those 
 who, like myself, don't understand. 
 
 I am sure you know well that no picture, 
 whether of landscape or figure, can bear a 
 resemblance to Nature, unless the values 
 or masses of light and shade are under- 
 stood and felt. In "up-to-date" Art we 
 often look in vain for these values ; they 
 are entirely missed out. Flatness is to be 
 obtained at all costs, while light and shade 
 are dispensed with. There was once a 
 simple old maxim (I have not heard it for 
 many a day), " Light against dark ; dark 
 against light." But now it is quite usual 
 to leave out the shadows altogether ; to 
 paint shadowless white figures against white 
 backgrounds, &c., forgetting that there is 
 251
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 but one way to make light " have darkness 
 to make it on." It is a false tendency to 
 translate natural objects as uniformly shadow- 
 less. I must now confess, that after I had 
 promised to meet the School of Art this 
 evening, I thought it prudent to arm myself 
 for the occasion with somewhat useful to 
 say. So I went up to London to see some 
 new pictures, and three galleries (1899) were 
 inspected: "The British Artists," "The 
 New English Art Club," and "The Arts 
 and Crafts." The first has indeed been 
 rightly named " A wilderness of paint 
 and wasted effort." Ideal subjects swarm 
 throughout the "wilderness" in dreariest 
 succession ; in them nothing is found of a 
 ruling and master quality which may appeal 
 to the imagination. They are not even 
 fantastic ; only tiresome. . . . And I can- 
 not think of anything more to say about the 
 "British Artists." At the "New English 
 Art Club" one was not tempted to linger 
 long I at least did not feel like it ! Though 
 the collection is very small, it is large enough 
 to bewilder the uninitiated. The infinite 
 enigma (to a true painter) of sunlight is 
 there supposed to be solved by a dazzle 
 of paint without luminousness. Flesh-tints 
 are done in blueish-blackish or brownish- 
 yellowish. It is an exhibition made up of 
 252
 
 Art Education 
 
 garish eccentricity. It is " New English 
 Art " all round. For these New Artists seem 
 to see in every colour except the pure crystal- 
 line of natural atmosphere. Next in order 
 came the "Arts and Crafts." This proved 
 full of interest, at least so far as the needle- 
 work, or embroidery, and actual handicraft 
 are concerned. It appeared to me, however, 
 as a whole, profoundly joyless. Dull, lifeless 
 figures done in coloured plaster, or traced 
 in charcoal, or painted on canvas, almost 
 every one a reminiscence of Burne-Jones, 
 saddened the gallery walls. Over the en- 
 trance door might well be inscribed, " Here 
 learn the Art of Melancholy " ; for whether 
 they dance, or flute, or clasp hands with 
 winged genii on the seashore all these 
 pictured people alike wear if nothing else ! 
 the same sad livery of woe. The very 
 youngest is old and worn, even while piping 
 tunes amid wreaths of flowers. The dis- 
 ciples of a celebrated Master will always 
 unconsciously seize and make their own his 
 weakest points, being the easiest to reach. 
 The powerful influence of Sir Edward Burne- 
 Jones would thus account for the "Arts 
 and Crafts' " prevailing type of hopelessness. 
 The reason, however, is far to seek why Art 
 whose very existence is solely to give 
 pleasure why it ever should be sad. Beau- 
 253
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 tifully designed jewels and metal work, as 
 shown in the glass cases, helped that day to 
 relieve my deep depression. This tour of 
 the galleries at an end, the conclusion in my 
 own mind was this: That a good honest 
 study, if nothing more than a copy in black 
 and white of an architectural ornament, 
 when carried out with breadth and freedom 
 and fidelity, is worth all the so-called 
 Idealisms of Modern Art ; at least, so far as 
 displayed in those galleries which the other 
 day I visited. After all, there is more to 
 be learnt from "The Life of Sir John 
 Millais " than from many exhibitions. By 
 that memoir we learn to know the prolonged 
 struggle he endured against the most deter- 
 mined opposition, until he became the 
 acknowledged head of his profession. We 
 read the history of the man with the great 
 heart and the clear, deep-seeing eye, true 
 from first to last to the one ideal of his 
 life ; " for he loved and worshipped Nature 
 rather than painting." Genius, like Millais's, 
 is born only with the few. Yet it lies within 
 the grasp of all to cultivate, to bring to 
 greater perfection than perhaps they believe, 
 habits of seeing, of observation, of acquiring 
 the power to perceive more and more of 
 beauty in their commonest every-day sur- 
 roundings. Everybody does not in this 
 2 54
 
 Art Education 
 
 sense possess the eye that sees, or the heart 
 that enjoys, or the retentive memory ; but 
 everybody can exercise and can intensify with 
 practice the faculties with which he is endued. 
 And as for the fairest scenes of Nature, her 
 hills, and woods, and clear waters and cloud- 
 wrought skies the exquisite tracery of 
 December's leafless trees, or sunlight playing 
 upon the leaves in summer beautiful sights 
 like these we should never part from. We 
 should remember them, and so should try 
 to make them our own that they might 
 come out in a hundred ways in our life, and 
 pass into our Art, and be to us, in another 
 sense, as to Nature's child of the fells and 
 waterfalls, when Wordsworth wrote " and 
 beauty, born of murmuring sound, shall 
 pass into her face." 
 
 Referring back for a moment to modern 
 changes, and chiefly to changes in technical 
 methods, there is a new one just made known"" 
 to me ; new to me, though very likely old to 
 you. It would seem but a trifling change, 
 yet I have thought it may not be without 
 a certain significance. I was watching the 
 other day a young student copying a bunch 
 of winter red China-roses. The buds and 
 long sprays would in my time have cost an 
 infinity of trouble, first to outline them in 
 the white paper, and then to fill in the 
 255
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 background, in and out of the stalks, &c. 
 In place of all this worry the process was 
 reversed. A plain dark ground was boldly 
 washed in first, and then the buds and 
 flowers carefully dabbed out and coloured. 
 What.hours of heart-break over those grounds 
 and outlines might not have been spared us 
 had we only known, in years gone by ! Yet 
 it is not alone the saving of trouble and 
 labour. I am now thinking of. There seems 
 to me in this new method the hint, as of a 
 door set ajar, which, when wider opened, 
 shall lead to a new era in Art ; lead, per- 
 chance, to something new in painting, which 
 bur Age is now only blindly groping after. 
 Something not better than the old, but 
 entirely different, witnessing to the truth 
 of Bacon's aphorism, that " things which 
 have never yet been done cannot be accom- 
 plished except by means not yet tried." 
 Towards an end like this even the extrava- 
 gances of " New English Art " might almost 
 be forgiven. With an onlook such as this 
 in front, students should be inspired with 
 renewed energy. With all the modern 
 appliances to help them, the unnumbered 
 aids at hand, .the sound teaching, and, to 
 name no higher intention, the increasing 
 demand for hand-painting (that particularly 
 odious expression of the day), they ought to 
 256
 
 Art Education 
 
 be inspired with fresh vigour, fresh courage, 
 to press forward and improve ; to work with 
 still greater earnestness and confidence, re- 
 membering meanwhile 
 
 "... to obey 
 
 Their mother Nature, safest, best of guides ; 
 Enduring fame is won by steps, not strides. 
 She tells us when to sow and when to reap, 
 When it is time to wake, and when to sleep." 
 
 Wiser counsel in all its simplicity none could 
 surely offer you Art and Nature go always 
 hand in hand. And trust me, I who have 
 already lived a long life in closest converse 
 with one and the other, can assure you 
 frankly that the longest of days need never 
 be dull or tedious to the true artist. To 
 one whose Art, of whatever kind, is a reality 
 in his life, the joy of work will light up the 
 gloomiest hour. He will draw whether 
 with pen or pencil or sculptor's chisel will 
 draw the thing as he sees it, and will keep 
 in mind the bearing of his Art on all he sees. 
 While, as for Nature, this world would in- 
 deed be a happier world could each one in 
 their separate way prove the refreshment of 
 Nature's companionship. Could they but 
 learn for themselves how " Nature never did 
 betray the heart that loved her." 
 
 I am afraid you will think that over a 
 hundred miles was a long way for me to 
 257 R
 
 The Peacock's Pleasaunce 
 
 come and to bring you only so slight a 
 sketch. I am sure, however, that you will 
 kindly take it for what it is worth, though 
 it be nothing better than a tiny stone cut 
 from the great quarry. 
 
 In conclusion I would have you lay hold 
 of and take to your heart the knowledge 
 that the office of Art is to educate the per- 
 ception of beauty. To take for yourself, in 
 your life as in your Art, the motto of the 
 threefold cord of love the love of Truth, 
 the love of Good, the love of Beauty. 
 
 Remember, too, that pictures should never 
 be too picturesque. A man who knew what 
 he was saying (R. Waldo Emerson) writes 
 in one of his essays, " Nothing astonishes 
 men so much as common sense and plain 
 dealing. A dog drawn by a true artist 
 satisfies and is a reality, not less than the 
 frescoes of Michael Angelo." 
 
 THE END
 
 BY "E. V. B." 
 
 SEVEN GARDENS AND A 
 
 PALACE. With Illustrations by ARTHUR 
 GORDON and F. L. GRIGGS. Price 55. net. 
 Crown 8vo. [Third Edition. 
 
 The Westminster Gazette. " The authoress gives us delight- 
 ful glimpses into the inner life of the country and the world of 
 flowers." 
 
 The Daily News. " The authoress, as all who know her 
 artistic and literary work are well aware, has a true feeling for 
 the beauty of nature, and her drawings have an originality and 
 poetry that charms the critic . . . her book is well adapted for 
 a peaceful summer afternoon's reading ... the illustrations are 
 excellent." 
 
 The World. " It is a charming companion for a leisure hour, 
 and has all a garden's freshness in its dainty pages." 
 
 The Manchester Guardian. "Will give unmixed pleasure to 
 its readers. Wherever one dips into these pages, one is re- 
 warded by some charming vision." 
 
 The Globe. " Will appeal irresistibly to all lovers of nature 
 ... a delightful breath of rurality. . . . The book is altogether 
 charming." 
 
 The Graphic. " ' E. V. B.' is a past-master of graceful 
 descriptive writing, and if one thing more than another could 
 make one envy those whose lives are cast in pleasant gardens 
 it would be this book, with its old aroma, pretty illustrations, 
 and the glorious pictures which it conjures up." 
 
 The Observer. " Delightful chapters on fascinating old 
 gardens." 
 
 Vanity Fair. "Must appear straightway on the shelves of 
 all lovers of gardens." 
 
 The Lady's Pictorial. " A book to have and to hold." 
 The Queen. " ' E. V. B.' has performed her task admirably."
 
 BOOKS BY HELEN MILMAN 
 
 MY KALENDAR OF COUNTRY 
 
 DELIGHTS. With 13 Full-page Illustrations^ Title Page, 
 and a Cover-Design by DONALD MAXWELL. Price 55. net. 
 Crown 8vo. 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. "Lovers of anthologies and lovers of 
 gardens will be equally pleased with Helen Milman's ' Kalendar of 
 Country Delights.' Her quotations, not too short to be profitable, 
 are marked by an excellent and discerning taste, while her own 
 comments are as happy as they are distinguished." 
 
 IN THE GARDEN OF PEACE. With 24 
 
 Illustrations and Cover designed by EDMUND H. NEW. 
 Price5s.net. Crown 8vo. \ThirdEdition. 
 
 The Spectator. "Mr. New seems to have a special gift for 
 drawing birds." 
 
 The Globe. " Sincerity is the note of the whole book, which is 
 lucky, we may add, in having Mr. E. H. New for its pictorial 
 illustrator." 
 
 MY ROSES AND HOW I GREW THEM. 
 
 With a Cover designed by EDMUND H. NEW. Price is. 6d. 
 
 net. Crown 8vo. [Second Edition. 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. " No earnest amateur can afford to be 
 without it. Miss Milman . . . has done a real service in the rose 
 garden." 
 
 OUTSIDE THE GARDEN. With 10 Full- 
 
 page and 20 smaller Illustrations, and a Cover-Design by 
 EDMUND H. NEW. Price 53. net. Crown 8vo. 
 The Daily Chronicle. " 'Outside the Garden' fully maintains 
 Mrs. Crofton's reputation as one of Nature's keenest observers. 
 Her chapter on crossbills, peewits, and squirrels, are just what are 
 wanted for our girls and boys, as they show how much may be 
 seen and learned by patient observation." 
 
 FROM THE HEART OF THE ROSE. 
 
 Letters on Things Natural, Things Serious, Things Frivo- 
 lous. With a Cover-Design by EDMUND H. NEW. Price 
 5s. net. Crown 8vo. 
 
 The Spectator. " Mrs. Crofton is one of the writers who have a 
 knack of turning out just the sort of book that it is nice to give 
 and to receive. Her books arc always pretty inside and out. They 
 are individual and genuine ; the outcome of real feeling and per- 
 sonal observation. They speak to us in the voice of a friend, and 
 tell us trifles perhaps, but trifles of pleasant savour and wholesome 
 suggestion."
 
 BY IZAAC WALTON AND CHARLES COTTON 
 
 THE COMPLEAT ANGLER. Edited, with 
 an Introduction, by RICHARD LE GALLIENNE. With 
 Photogravure Portraits of Walton and Cotton, and 
 over 250 Illustrations and Cover-Design by EDMUND 
 H. NEW. Price 55. net. Crown 8vo. 
 
 The Spectator. "Of Mr. Edmund H. New's illustrations we 
 cannot speak too highly. We have never seen better. " 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. " One of the best editions ; one, we can- 
 not help thinking, that Walton himself would have preferred." 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette. " The great charm of the new edition 
 is Mr. E. New's illustrations. They are beautiful reproductions of 
 pen-and-ink sketches, which are in complete harmony with the 
 spirit of Arcadian peace characteristic of the grand old angler's 
 pages." 
 
 BY GILBERT WHITE 
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SEL- 
 BORNE. Edited, with an Introduction, by GRANT 
 ALLEN. With upwards of 200 Illustrations by 
 EDMUND H. NEW. Price 53. net. Crown 8vo. 
 
 Country Life. "The attraction lies chiefly in finding the master- 
 piece so admirably illustrated by Mr. Edmund H. New. In black- 
 and-white line work of this class he has no equal." 
 
 The Speaker. " Mr. Edmund New's drawings are not merely 
 artistic but full of the poetry of association. " 
 
 BY JOHN D. SEDDING 
 
 GARDEN-CRAFT OLD AND NEW. With 
 a Memorial Notice of the Author by the Rev. E. F. 
 RUSSELL, and 9 Full-page Illustrations. Price 7s. 6d. 
 net. Demy 8vo. 
 
 The Daily News. " A delightful work on a delightful subject." 
 The Spectator. "Contains much useful knowledge and wise 
 hints, all of which are given with the grace and style of a really 
 able and cultured mind brought to l>ear on the subject ; and all 
 through the volume the reader will find interspersed charming his- 
 torical reminiscences and delightful theories for the production of 
 beautiful and harmonious ideals of the craft of gardening." 
 
 The Saturday Review. " We believe that every one who intends 
 to lay out a new garden would do well to study the precepts of 
 garden craft ; the volume is one which will be read with real pleasure 
 as well as profit."
 
 TRAVELS IN ENGLAND. By RICHARD LE 
 
 GALLIENNE. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 ITALIAN VILLAS AND THEIR GAR- 
 DENS. By EDITH WHARTON. With numerous Coloured 
 Designs by MAYFIELD PARRISH. Demy 4(10. 2 is. net. 
 
 BY HARRY ROBERTS 
 
 THE CHRONICLE OF A CORNISH GAR- 
 DEN. With 7 ideal Illustrations by F. L. GRIGGS. Price 
 55. net. Crown 8vo. 
 
 The Literary World. " The Chronicle is written in a frank, un- 
 affected style, and will suggest useful ideas to other garden lovers." 
 
 The Bookman. "It is written with grace and knowledge, and 
 pleases as well as teaches." 
 
 MY GARDEN IN THE CITY OF GAR- 
 DENS. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 IN A TUSCAN GARDEN. With numerous 
 
 Illustrations reproduced from Photographs. Price 55. net. 
 Crown 8vo. 
 
 The Westminster Gazette. "Those who intend settling tem- 
 porarily or permanently in Italy will find the volume of more practical 
 use to them than any other single work we remember to have come 
 across." 
 
 FLOWERS AND GARDENS. By FORBES 
 
 WATSON. Notes on Plant Beauty. Edited, with an 
 Introduction, by Rev. Canon ELLACOMBE. With a Por- 
 trait of the Author. Price 53. net. Crown 8vo. 
 Mr. JAMES DOUGLAS in The Star. " A most delightful summer 
 
 companion. It is a treasury of curious folk-lore, full of delicate 
 
 observation and gentle thoughts." 
 
 STRAY LEAVES FROM A BORDER 
 GARDEN. By MARY PAMELA MILNE HOME. With 8 
 Full-page Illustrations and Cover-Design by F. L. GRIGGS. 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 IN MY VICARAGE GARDEN. By the Rev. 
 
 Canon ELLACOMBE. With a Photogravure Frontispiece of 
 
 the Author. Price $s. net. Crown 8vo. 
 
 The Daily Chronicle. " One is not often fortunate enough to 
 come upon a scholar in a flower garden, but Canon Ellacombe has 
 a quality of his own."
 
 HANDBOOKS 
 
 OF PRACTICAL GARDENING 
 
 Under the General Editorship of 
 HARRY ROBERTS 
 
 Illustrated. Crown 8vo. Price 2s. 6d. net. Postage 3d. 
 a volume extra. 
 
 Volumes already Published. 
 
 THE BOOK OF ASPARAGUS. By CHARLES ILOTT, F.R.H.S. 
 THE BOOK OF THE GREENHOUSE. By J. C. TALLACK, F.R.H.S. 
 THE BOOK OF THE GRAPE. By H. W. WARD, F.R.H.S. 
 THE BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS. By HARRY 
 
 ROBERTS. 
 
 THE BOOK OF BULBS. By S. ARNOTT, F.R.H.S. 
 THE BOOK OF THE APPLE. By H. H. THOMAS. 
 THE BOOK OF VEGETABLES. By GEORGE WYTHES, V.M.H. 
 THE BOOK OF ORCHIDS. By W. H. WHITE, F.R.H.S. 
 THE BOOK OF THE STRAWBERRY. By E. BECKETT, F.R.H.S. 
 THE BOOK OF CLIMBING PLANTS. By S. ARNOTT, F.R.H.S. 
 THE BOOK OF PEARS AND PLUiMS. By the Rev. E. BAR- 
 
 TRUM, D.D. 
 
 THE BOOK OF HERBS. By LADY ROSALIND NORTHCOTE. 
 THE BOOK OF THE WILD GARDEN. By S. W. FITZHKRBERT. 
 THE BOOK OF THE HONEY BEE. By CHARLES HARRISON. 
 THE BOOK OF SHRUBS. By GEORGE GORDON, V.M.H. 
 THE BOOK OF THE DAFFODIL. By Rev. S. E. BOURNE. 
 THE BOOK OF THE LILY. By W. COLORING. 
 THE BOOK OF TOPIARY. By C. H. CURTIS and W. GIBSON. 
 THE BOOK OF TOWN AND WINDOW GARDENING. By Mrs. 
 
 F. A. BARDSWELL. 
 
 THE BOOK OF THE IRIS. By R. IRWIN LYNCH, A.L.S. 
 THE BOOK OF GARDEN FURNITURE. By C. THONGER. 
 THE BOOK OF THE CARNATION. By C. P. BROTHKRSTON and 
 
 MARTIN R. SMITH. 
 
 THE BOOK OF GARDEN DESIGN. By CHARLES THONGBR. 
 THE BOOK OF THE SCENTED GARDEN. By F. W. BURBIDGK. 
 THE BOOK OF THE WINTER GARDEN. By D. S. FISH. 
 THE BOOK OF RARER VEGETABLES. By GEORGE WYTHES, 
 
 V.M.H., and HARRY ROBERTS. 
 
 THE BOOK OF MARKET GARDENING. By R. L. CASTLE. 
 THE BOOK OF ROCK AND WATER GARDENS. By CHARLES 
 
 THONGER. 
 
 THE BOOK OF THE CHRYSANTHEMUM. By PERCY S. FOLLWILL. 
 THE BOOK OF FRUIT BOTTLING. P.y EDITH BRADLEY and 
 
 MAY CKOOKE. 
 THE BOOK OF GARDEN PESTS AND PLANT DISEASES. By 
 
 R. HOOPER PEARSON. 
 
 ** Any of the above volumes will be sent post free by a Bookseller on 
 receipt of a Postal Order for 'Two Shillings and Ninepence.
 
 THE COUNTRY HANDBOOKS 
 
 A Series of Illustrated Practical Handbooks dealing with 
 Country Life. Suitable for the Pocket or Knapsack. Under 
 the General Editorship of HARRY ROBERTS. Foolscap 8vo 
 (6 x 4 in.)- Price, bound in limp cloth, 33. net. Postage 
 3d. a volume extra. 
 
 New Volumes. 
 
 THE PHOTOGRAPHER'S HANDBOOK. 
 THE VET. BOOK. An Account of the 
 
 Ailments and Accidents of Domestic Animals. By 
 FRANK TOWNEND BARTON, M.R.C.V.S. 
 
 ** The author, in presenting this small .guide, has endeavoured to give 
 a brief and practical account of the commoner ailments and accidents inci- 
 dental to the horse, ox, sheep, pig, dog, cat, &c. &c. ; and, when necessary, 
 has indicated the lines of treatment and management to be adopted in cases 
 of emergency. The reader must understand that professional aid is, in the 
 majority of instances, the most economical after all, because of the uncer- 
 tainty confronting the amateur in the diagnosing of disease, which may lead 
 to the application of remedies altogether unsuitable, to say nothing of the 
 risk involved and the dangers attending the misapplication of any given 
 remedy. 
 
 THE INSECT BOOK. By W. PERCIVAL 
 
 WESTELL, F.L.S., M.B.O.V., Author of "A Year with 
 Nature," " Country Rambles," " British Bird Life," &c. &c. 
 Illustrated with 36 Photographs by ROWLAND B. IMISSON. 
 
 Volumes already Published. 
 
 THE TRAMP'S HANDBOOK. By H. ROBERTS. 
 
 THE MOTOR BOOK. By R. J. MECREDY. 
 
 THE STILL ROOM. By Mrs. ROUNDELL. 
 
 THE BIRD BOOK. By A. J. R. ROHRRTS. 
 
 THE LITTLE FARM. By " HOME COUNTIES." 
 
 THE FISHERMAN'S HANDBOOK. By E. S. SHRUBSOLE. 
 
 THE SAILING HANDBOOK. By CLOVE HITCH. 
 
 THE KENNEL HANDBOOK. By C. J. DAVIES. 
 
 THE GUN ROOM. By ALEX. INNES SHAND. 
 
 THE COUNTRY COTTAGE. By G. H. MORRIS and 
 
 ESTHER WOOD. 
 
 THE STABLE HANDBOOK. By T. F. DALE. 
 THE TREE BOOK. By MARY R. JARVIS. New and 
 
 Revised Edition.
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A 000 778 801 1