which the modern rock garden is undoubtedly a successor-and the botanical experiments of her friends, but it was not till she came into her kingdom and found a house and a garden awaiting her energies that the talents which had expressed themselves in a variety of directions, and had always been at the service of her friends, found an individual sphere of usefulness. Henceforth her interest in gardening becomes much stronger. We find her writing with enthusiasm of Lord Orrery's home, of Lady Orrery's delight in farming, of his in building and gardening, and she tells of a summer-house which might have been inspired by Lamia or Elizabeth. "They have a lodge about a mile from their house where they spend most of their time; it has all the advantages of water, wood, and diversified grounds; and there the new house is to be built. Nothing is completed yet, but an hermitage which is about an acre of ground-an island planted with all the variety of trees, shrubs, and flowers that will grow in this country, abundance of little winding walks, differently embellished with little seats and banks; in the midst is placed an hermit's cell, made of the roots of trees. the floor is paved with pebbles, there is a couch made of matting and little wooden stools, a table with a manuscript on it, a pair of spectacles, a leathern bottle; and hung up in different parts an hour glass, a weather glass, and several mathematical instruments, a shelf of books, another of wooden platters and bowls, another of earthen ones; in short, everything that you might imagine necessary for a recluse. Four little gardens surround his house-an orchard, a flower garden, a physic garden, and a kitchen garden, with a kitchen to boil a tea kettle or so. I never saw so pretty a whim so thoroughly well executed." We get elaborate descriptions of the houses she

visited, with notes of furniture and decoration. But she is at her happiest when describing her own home and the alterations she plans. She revels in her drawing-room, hung with tapestry, and her bedroom with its crimson damask; her new wall-papers give her almost as keen a pleasure as they do Elizabeth in her convent home. Mrs. Delany does not perhaps write with the fluency of professed garden authors, but her love is no less. She evidently believes, with Elizabeth, that a garden should be "beautiful from end to end, and not start off in the front of the house with fire-works, going off at its farthest limit to sheer sticks." Elizabeth declares that she has tried to make her garden "increase in loveliness, if not in tidiness, the farther you get into it; and the visitor who thinks in his innocence as he emerges from the shade of the verandah, that he sees the best before him, is artfully conducted from beauty to beauty, till he beholds what I think is the most charming bit, the silver birch and azalea plantation down at the very end." Mrs. Delany finds a similar satisfaction in the uttermost parts of her garden. "The back part of the house is towards a bowling green, that slopes gently off down to a little brook that runs through the garden; on the other side of the brook is a high bank with a hanging wood of evergreen, at the top of which is a circular terrace that surrounds the greatest part of the garden, the wall of which is covered with fruit trees, and on the other side of the walk a border for flowers and the greatest quantity of roses and sweet briar that ever I saw; on the right hand of the bowling green towards the bottom is placed our hayrick ... On the left hand of the bowling green is a terrace-walk that takes in a sort of parterre, that will make the prettiest orangery in the world, for it is an oval of green, planted round in double rows

...

of elm-trees and flowering shrubs, with little grass walks in between which will give a good shelter to exotics. . . . In the middle, sloping from the terrace every way, are the fields, or rather paddocks, where our deer and our cows are kept, and the rurality is wonderfully pretty. These fields are planted in a wild way with forest trees and with bushes that look so naturally you would not imagine it the work of art. There are several prettinesses I can't explain to you, little wild walks, private seats, and lovely prospects. One seat particularly, I am very fond of, in a nut grove, and 'the beggars' hut,' which is a seat in a rock; on the top are bushes of all kinds, that bend over: it is placed at the end of a cunning wild path, thick set with trees, and it overlooks the brook which entertains you with a purling stream." Already in 1744 there was evidently a feeling for the "wild garden" which forms so interesting a hobby with the gardener of to-day.

We can imagine the expert set loose in this charming spot, there is capital here from both horticultural and literary point of view, for which the authoress, writing in all simplicity, does not, of course, obtain the full value. Mme. D'Arblay also loves her garden, but it is in a more prosaic spirit. It takes, however, a good deal more than flowers to make a garden book, though over and over again we find Mrs. Delany, like Mrs. Fuller Maitland, enjoying, it would seem, the mere writing of the names of flowers. The Day Book of Bethia Hardacre is really not a garden but a house book, and we could get a very similar "house book" from Mrs. Delany. Mrs. Fuller Maitland knows the worth of flowers, both as a setting and in relation to other subjects. And flowers blossom as freely in the upper chamber of her London house as In Veronica's Garden. "Over a hedge of tulips, pansies, rosemary, hyacinths,

and columbines, we regarded one another," she writes one day. And again, "When as I did the other day, I sow a seed of blue Lupine, the act is closely followed by a cracking of the brown earth above the buried bean, and then the breaking forth of a green bi-valved treasure which shortly opens and permits the uprising of two starry dewspangled leaves springing from swiftgrowing slender stems. To those to whom the labor of the treadmill is particularly disheartening, the gardener's craft is peculiarly attractive. Place some seemingly withered bulbs into autumn's damp chilly soil, and you shall see as the outcome of that sad day's industry, a vivid blaze of rainbow-hued flowers, gorgeous tulips, silver snowdrops, hyacinths, marvels of sweetness and delicate bloom." Writing in London, Mrs. Fuller Maitland brings a real outdoors feeling into her indoors book. "There is a sound pertaining to summer that year by year I count upon hearing, but which hitherto I have never brought within the boundary of four walls. The gentle artillery of the whin when returning the hot beams of the sun's fire with the crackling report akin to the crackling of kindled wood, is, to my mind, of all sounds the most suggestive of golden noon and the honeysweet incense of summer." This is, of course, essentially modern in spirit. Like the Renaissance ladies, Mrs. Fuller Maitland perceives the value of a floral background. It was not thus that Mrs. Delany envisaged her garden, but nevertheless there is a kinship of philosophical outlook on life between the woman of a hundred years ago and the woman of to-day. We find not only a kindred philosophy, but the same sympathetic observation of men and manners,, the same interest in art, in needlework, and in countless other subjects. The old receipts which "Bethia Hardacre" quotes from the herbals she loves so well, are actual

remedies prescribed in the eighteenth century letters. And occasionally, too, the slightly precious style of Mrs. Fuller Maitland takes on an old-world air, which might render her reflections on human nature, on life and its conduct, almost interchangeable with those of Mrs. Delany.

I have taken Mrs. Delany as an example in chief because of all the women of her period she presents us with perhaps at once the widest and most intimate point of view. While mingling with the "blue stockings," she was not one of them. If less erudite than some, her general culture was wider, her outlook broader. There is little that we can look for in any of the garden books of to-day-and while related by certain main characteristics, these cover a wide field, spreading far in various directions, according to the individual taste or attitude of the writer for which we cannot find an analogous example in Mrs. Delany's writings; and the habit, much affected by all the group, of letting their writing take the form of disconnected papers, usually bearing dates, although a minor matter, brings with it yet another quota of similarity.

Yet while there is so much to suggest the genesis of the garden book in the pages of eighteenth-century corresponddence, it is to Miss Mitford's Our Village that we must look for its lineal ancestor. In her sketches of character, quite as much as in her sketches, of Nature, we see the resemblance. Her country folks are akin to those who occasionally make their appearance in Elizabeth's pages; her village boys have caught the real spirit of boyhood which was then so decorously repressed in public and is to-day allowed to run rampant; there are echoes of "Lizzy" to be found in the April, May, and June babies; we find in her silhouettes the same genuine unaffected love and understanding of childhood. And her

more subtle portraits, though redolent of their period, have much of the individual charm of Irais, of Veronica or the Babe. Her attitude to Nature approaches more nearly to ours than that of Mrs. Delany. A modern note begins to vibrate through the love of the outof-door world. She writes of white and purple violets "enamelling" the short dewy grass. Her glimpse of the woodland stream seems almost an echo from Bethia Hardacre. "The clear deep silent spring which sleeps SO peacefully under its high flowery bank, red with the tall spiral stalks of the foxglove and their rich pendant bells; blue with the beautiful forget-me-not, that gem-like blossom which looks like a living jewel of turquoise and topaz. It is almost too late to see its beauty; and here is the pleasant shady lane, where the high elms will shut out the little twilight that remains. Ah, but we shall have the fairy lamps to guide us, the stars of the earth, the glowworms. .. One seems tremulous, vibrating as if on the extremity of a leaf of grass; the others are deeper in the hedge, in some green cell on which their light falls with an emerald lustre." The snatches of poetry, which are a feature of the many characteristic garden books, find their place in Our Village, and throughout the intimate feeling for Nature, inspiring, ennobling, is as evident as in the most sincere of the modern writers. The appreciation is there, as it may have been fifty years before, but it is deepened, widened, fuller of meaning and suggestion. Just as Elizabeth wanted to be alone in her garden that her soul might have time to grow, so we feel the soul of the authoress of Our Village finding wings again on the violet bank after her sojourn in "feverish London." "How beautifully they are placed on this sloping bank with the palm branches waving over them, full of early bees, and mixing their honeyed scent with the more delicate

...

violet odor! How transparent and smooth and lusty are the branches, full of sap and life! And there, just by the old mossy root, is a superb tuft of primroses with a yellow butterfly hovering over them, like a flower floating on the air. What happiness to sit on this tufty knoll and fill my basket with The Fortnightly Review.

the blossoms! What a renewal of heart and mind! To inhabit such a scene of peace and sweetness is again to be fearless, gay, and gentle as a child. Then it is that thought becomes poetry and feeling religion."

Ethel M. M. McKenna.

If any one cares to know how I became acquainted with the cobbler, I do not mind admitting that it was through the two girls. When I first came to live in the fifth house in the square, the two girls occupied rooms on the ground floor, whence (the house being jerry-built and the walls thin) ripples of laughter were occasionally wafted up to the first floor back. The laughter sounded inviting, friendly, and, though not uproarious, cheerful in the extreme; as if, in fact, the two girls, buffets or no buffets from the world, had concluded to take it as it was, and make the best of it. To me, somewhat lonely I confess, the sense of companionship was a welcome one, and, surreptitious inspections having convinced me that they came in com. fortably at the waist, and were blessed with nice hair and neat boots, I was only too glad, meeting them on the stairs one day, to find a tentative bow answered by two beaming smiles.

It was certainly through the two girls that I became acquainted with the cobbler. Walking up the garden-path one day, I observed the younger (and prettier) of them standing at the door. The afternoon sun was trying its best to make gold of her brown hair. That, however, is merely by the way. The cobbler was in it (in the way, I mean) and, what is more, he made not the slightest attempt to get out of it. So that it was neither inquisitiveness, nor

a desire for information, which made me a listener to the conversation, but dire necessity.

He was a tallish man with a ragged beard, and there was a rapt expression in his eyes which attracted my attention at once. In his hand he held a pair of shoes, and I noticed that they were small shoes and had dainty heels. This is a digression, however, for the cobbler was not talking about the shoes, though he looked as if he were, and, business being business, doubtless should have been.

"And my voice could be distinctly heard above all the other voices," I heard him say, "and it floated up into the dome, and it echoed in the roof softer, and softer, and softer. Then it died away."

I caught his eye; there was not the slightest embarrassment in his manner. He looked at me gravely for a minute; then he took his departure, and I was left with the younger (and prettier) of the two girls.

"I'm afraid I have interrupted an in. teresting conversation," I said.

She smiled, and informed me that it was precisely what I had done. "He is a most interesting man," she added.

"He appears to be a jewel of great price," I responded; "but what is the mystery of his voice?"

"His voice?"

"Yes; it grows softer, and softer, and

echoes in domes, and does other funny things."

"Ah, you heard," she said half reproachfully; then she explained the cobbler to me.

It appeared that the cobbler was a cobbler from necessity, and a musician by instinct. When the necessity pressed, he made or mended boots; when it did not, he went to St. Paul's and sang. His taste was exclusive; none but church music. appealed to him, and St. Paul's was his church of churches. Perhaps it was that its dome took kindly to the practice of echoing; perhaps, that long acquainttance with it had endeared the structure to him; but certain it is, that there, whenever a chance offered, he went; and there, on his own proud admission, he sang prodigiously. Sundays were naturally his field-days. During the week, his powers had to some extent to be repressed, and his yearnings only partially satisfied, but on Sundays he found an ample and generous recompense. The earliest service found him ready, and evensong never ended too late for him.

The younger of the two girls waxed enthusiastic about the cobbler. "He is so truly artistic," she said, "so different from ordinary people. Fancy his working hard day after day at such coarse work as mending boots, while, within his soul, there is always this deep longing for beauty and peace and music!"

I am ashamed to say I could not repress a smile. She blushed. "I'm afraid it seems stupid," she said.

"On the contrary, it is most interesting," I protested. "I should like to meet him."

"Well, he's often here," she said, "and"

"I'm often here," I rejoined.

Some few days afterwards there came a modest tap at the door of my room, and, opening it, I saw the younger of the two girls. "I

am

afraid you will think it very silly," she said, "but the cobbler is here, and, as you seemed so interested in him the other day, I thought you might like to see him now."

"But I

I expressed my gratitude. hope I sha'n't put him off his conversation," I added.

"You are not so bad as all that," she admitted graciously, so we went downstairs together.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Boles," she said brightly. "You've done the shoes?" "Yes, Miss."

"And how is St. Paul's getting on? This gentleman takes a great interest in it."

The cobbler seemed relieved. Perhaps he had thought that in my presence St. Paul's might be ruled inadmissible. "I was there yesterday, being Sunday, Miss," he replied gravely. "How lovely are the messengers!" was the anthem. It was grand. My voice kind of ruled the choir, sometimes loud, sometimes soft, but always ruling.. The Dean preached in the morning,-a beautiful sermon, Miss. When he went into the pulpit, he bowed to me as though to say, "Thank you, Mr. Boles.'"

"That was very nice of him," said my companion.

"It was, Miss, very nice; and in the afternoon two ladies,- one oldish and one quite young-came in at the north door. They walked right up, and looked round, as though to say: 'Whereis he?' Of course, I knew what they wanted. The Dean had mentioned my singing to his wife and daughter, and here they were, come to hear me. So I got up, and bowed, and said, "The next chairs are vacant, ladies, and I am Mr.. Boles.'"

The cobbler paused.

"And what happened?" I asked.

"Well, they sat there and listened," he continued slowly. "Rock of Ages was the hymn,-it's a good hymn, and