cent hum the bee goes
past! My chaffinch's nest, my swallows,--twittering but a few months
ago around the kraal of the Hottentot, or chasing flies around the six
solitary pillars of Baalbec,--with their nests in the corners of my
bed-room windows, my long-armed fruit-trees flowering against my sunny
wall, are not mighty pleasures, but then they are my own, and I have
not to go in search of them. And so, like a wise man, I am content
with what I have, and make it richer by my fancy, which is as cheap as
sunlight, and gilds objects quite as prettily. It is the coins in my
own pocket, not the coins in the pockets of my neighbour, that are of
use to me. Discontent has never a doit in her purse, and envy is the
most poverty stricken of the passions.

His own children, and the children he happens to meet on the country
road, a man regards with quite different eyes. The strange, sunburnt
brats returning from a primrose-hunt and laden with floral spoils, may
be as healthy looking, as pretty, as well-behaved, as sweet-tempered,
as neatly dressed as those that bear his name,--may be in every respect
as worthy of love and admiration; but then they have the misfortune not
to belong to him. That little fact makes a great difference. He knows
nothing about them; his acquaintance with them is born and dead in a
moment. I like my garden better than any other garden, for the same
reason. It is my own. And ownership in such a matter implies a great
deal. When I first settled here, the ground around the house was sour
moorland. I made the walk, planted the trees, built the moss-house,
erected the sun-dial, brought home the rhododendrons and fed them with
the mould which they love so well. I am the creator of every blossom,
of every odour that comes and goes in the wind. The rustle of my trees
is to my ear what his child's voice is to my friends the village doctor
or the village clergyman. I know the genealogy of every tree and plant
in my garden. I watch their growth as a father watches the growth of
his children. It is curious enough, as showing from what sources
objects derive their importance, that if you have once planted a tree
for other than commercial purposes,--and in that case it is usually
done by your orders and by the hands of hirelings,--you have always in
it a peculiar interest. You care more for it than you care for all the
forests of Norway or America. _You_ have planted it, and that is
sufficient to mak