vergrown pomp in the question's form, but that is
how she very modestly asked it, and I will take no liberty with its
construction. I thought his reply a good one.

"We have all," he said, "come up from wild nature. In wild nature there
are innumerable delights, but they are qualified by countless
inconveniences. The cave, tent, cabin, cottage and castle have gradually
been evolved by an orderly accumulation and combination of defences and
conveniences which secure to us a host of advantages over wild nature
and wild man. Yet rightly we are loath to lose any more of nature than
we must in order to be her masters and her children in one, and to
gather from her the largest fund of profit and delight she can be made
to yield. Hence around the cottage, the castle or the palace waves and
blooms the garden."

Was he not right? This is why, in our pleasant Northampton affair, we
have accepted it as our first rule of private gardening that _the house
is the climacteric note_.

This is why the garden should never be more architectural and artificial
than the house of which it is the setting, and this is why the garden
should grow less and less architectural and artificial as it draws
away from the house. To say the same thing in reverse, the garden,
as it approaches the house, should accept more and more
discipline--domestication--social refinement, until the house itself at
length seems as unabruptly and naturally to grow up out of the garden as
the high keynote rises at the end of a lady's song.

By this understanding of the matter what a fine truce-note is blown
between the contending advocates of "natural" and of "formal" gardening!
The right choice between these two aspects of the art, and the right
degree in either choice, depend on the character of the house. The house
is a part of the garden. It is the garden's brow and eyes. In gardening,
almost the only thing which costs unduly is for us to try to give our
house some other house's garden. One's private garden should never be
quite so far removed from a state of nature as his house is. Its leading
function should be to delight its house's inmates (and intimates) in
things of nature so refined as to inspire and satisfy their happiest
moods. Therefore no garden should cost, nor look as if it cost, an
outlay of money, time or toil that cramps the house's own ability to
minister to the genuine bodily needs and spiritual enlargements of its
indwellers; and therefore, als