unit of horse-power which is developed by the engines. But the machinery of a liner will weigh from three to five hundredweights per indicated unit of horse-power. The first has neither cargo nor passengers to carry; the last is a commercial venture, depending on these for success. The magnitude of the venture may be estimated from the fact that a modern Atlantic liner must carry from 1000 to 1600 passengers and 2000 to 4000 tons of cargo, besides her 2000 to 3000 tons of coal, and must earn about 16,000l. clear per trip, before a penny of profit is made. At the same time, passengers demand more and more room. The Lucania, for example, is given up so much to passenger accommodation that only 1600 tons of cargo can be carried, with 2000 bags of mails.

Again, increased speed is accompanied by most unpleasant vibration. To avoid this, fast ships already have recourse to many expedients. For instance, the boiler-rooms of the Campania have double casings, the space enclosed being filled with a material which acts as a non-conductor of sound. A further increase of speed might easily render the vibration almost as intolerable as it is on a torpedo-boat.

Further, those who are sanguine respecting the probability of largely increased speeds fail to take account of the conditions which have facilitated the past increase in the rate of travelling. The reduction of speed by one half has occupied sixty years, which have been characterised by the most remarkable developments in the machinery of propulsion. Without such developments, these great advances in speed would not have been possible. There is good reason to believe that the sources of energy at present available, and the mechanical details of their transformation, have now and for several years past been utilised to the utmost degree. Therefore, unless some further radical improvements in the machinery of propulsion occur, no important increase of speed can be obtained. The truth lies in a nutshell: energy cannot be created, it can only be transformed. To produce a given speed, a corresponding amount of energy must be stored up and utilised in the vessel. Coal contains the latent force, while the machinery forms the agency of utilisation. To gain a little more speed would involve storing much more coal; and this would mean a demand on space so disproportionate that there would not be enough room left for passengers and cargo to render a vessel a paying venture. It would mean turning a liner into a sort of magnified torpedo-boat. Already the consumption of coal is enormous on a liner; it amounts to 350 or even 500 tons a day. And yet, though the aggregate is so large, the actual proportion of coal consumed to the energy or

horse-power developed is now so extremely small that it seems impossible to reduce it further. The best liners do not burn quite 1 lb. of coal per unit of horse-power developed per hour. The earlier steamers burnt 5 and 6 lb. per unit per hour; so that, though the energy necessary for propulsion at the present speeds is, say, eight times that developed in the early steamers, the coal required is only about one third or one fourth of what would have been required for an equivalent energy in earlier days. The Great Eastern failed, not because she was a big ship-for she was not so heavy as the latest linerbut by reason of the vast dead-weight of coal which she had to carry. At that period the marine engine was a weakling in comparison with its successor of the present day, and the boiler pressure was very low. The result was that the Great Eastern required more than three times as much coal as a modern liner requires, in order to produce a given degree of power. It is, therefore, we think, safe to predict that no important advance in the speeds of liners will be made by existing types of boilers and engines.

But though no great improvement may be in store, we may well be content with what we have. A wonderful advance in the art of building and equipping steamships has been made, and the story of this advance has an interest, an excitement of its own. Machinery, steam, and steel are not without their poetry. Romance has not disappeared from the seas with the white-winged clippers, nor will it disappear while the great steamships plough their courses, regardless of the trades, doldrums, and calms, of hurricanes and tempests, of icebergs and all the other perils of the sea. Safer and more comfortable than their predecessors, both for passengers and crew, they are one of the most marvellous mechanical products of the nineteenth century. They are the crown of ages of navigation, carrying our thoughts far back through thirty centuries to the youth of the world-to the daring mariners of Norway and Phoenicia, to the triremes of Carthage and of Athens, to the 'hollow ships' which were beached before Troy, and to the mythical heroes who sailed on the quest of the Golden Fleece.

ART. V.-1. The Wild Garden. By W. Robinson. Fourth edition. London: John Murray, 1894.

2. Garden Craft, Old and New. By John D. Sedding. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, and Co., 1895.

3. Wood and Garden. By Gertrude Jekyll. London: Longmans, 1899.

THE

HE dictum, 'it is all a matter of taste,' has in it that soupçon of truth which may be found in many an accepted saying. It is true so far as it goes, but that is only a very little way. The canons of taste are the verdict of centuries of cultivated thought devoted to a given subject; and, though no one can be denied the right of private judgment, the balance of truth will generally incline towards the experts. Their opinions have already been sifted and over-ruled or modified; and to set aside their garnered wisdom is an enterprise not lightly to be undertaken.

Our love of flowers has a long pedigree, for though the gardens of the Romans were laid waste during the barbarism which followed their departure, the gardener's art was revived by the Church. War and rapine-with the necessity of protecting rather than embellishing the narrow precincts of a stronghold-were the employment of the laity. But within the peaceful walls of the monastery the gentler arts found a retreat; and the work of acclimatisation was carried on with zeal and intelligence. It was not until Tudor times that they could emerge into the world once more. It is to the stately decorum of those days that the school of art appeals. But if Bacon discourses rapturously of 'prince-like gardens,' Linnæus wept with delight at the first field of gorse which he saw in bloom. If the creation of a garden be an attempt to enhance the beauty of the world, there is room for all sorts of gardening; and if there be any spot from which the turmoil of controversy should be excluded, it is here. When Epicurus planted a garden, his design was not to provide an incentive to disputation, but a needful sedative.

How completely this principle may be overlooked is manifested by the first two of the books before us. Possibly it were unreasonable to expect an architect and a landscape gardener to see with the same eyes; yet there should be an intimate sympathy. The finished picture should lie before the mind's eye of the architect; but years before the first stone is laid, the trees and shrubs, which are to be the main features of the garden, should be started on their career. The quarrel might well have been avoided had each author known better how to

entrench himself within his position and recognise his limitations. The garden enclosed,' with its ordered grace and sweetness, is not necessarily a 'stone yard,' a mechanic's playground, a Dutchman's fad; nor, on the other hand, does freedom from the trammels of art imply a wilderness. On one side there is the disciple of Nature, to whom the plumb-line, the shears, and the foot-rule are anathema; on the other there is the trained artist, with his quick sensibility and reverence for the antique beauty of a statelier time, to whom a garden represents Nature glorified by its passage through man's mind-the living memorial of a dead past. To one the immortal Brown' is the apostle of a nobler and a living creed. To the other he is a barbarian, who would wheel away the very gods of Greece.

Happily the dispute is none of ours. We are not called upon to walk with Bacon and Temple and Evelyn among their pleached alleys, dappled with tender gloom, nor to appraise the motives of those who swept away their work. It is to Nature, a more exacting mistress than either, that we are called upon to do homage. The true gardener must possess the attributes of both the poet and the artist; and accordingly both factions have laid claim to their advocacy. Milton, Herrick, Herbert, and Donne are suffused with garden imagery. But before we descend to Thomson, as the propounder of a naturalistic style, it must be remembered that it was among the woods and by the streams that Chaucer and many another English bard loved to go a-maying. Gainsborough's school undoubtedly had its influence; but the landscape gardeners -pioneers of the Wild Garden-cannot boast of having infected the national taste with their love of scenery. For, co-existing with the extreme of artificiality in garden craft, there ever lingered in the English character the love of woodland, flower, and field. Our climate may be toujours affreux, but it is favourable to scenic effect. There are loftier scenes,' as Hawthorne says, 'in many countries than the best that England can show; but for the picturesqueness of the smallest object that lies under its gentle gloom and sunshine there is no scenery like it anywhere.'

Before passing to the general consideration of our subject we must notice one of the latest contributions to the swelling tide of garden literature. The pleasant scenes which the author of 'Wood and Garden' conjures up before her readers' eyes have the merit of realism, being a record of work achieved. The catalogue of failures, of which works of this nature too often consist, may provide amusement to some and afford a warning

to others. But they suggest the inquiry, Why not subordinate your hopes to the conditions under which you have to work? Success is, on the whole, a healthier diet than disappointment. Miss Jekyll pays a just tribute to the influence which Mr. Robinson's publications have exercised upon the art of gardening; yet, while disclaiming any desire to rival the plantlore collected in his works, she gives horticultural hints which the tyro will welcome and the expert will not despise.

The assumption that we have seen the last of the dreary formalism of the interregnum is to bury the dead past too summarily. It ignores the caprice of fashion, against which even a thing of beauty cannot strive successfully. The value of varieties is in no way called in question by suggesting that a novelty is not necessarily more beautiful than the type, while it is very commonly inferior in hardihood. There is true enthusiasm for the beautiful in Miss Jekyll's work, and there is a clear perception of the fact that in proportion as the gardener makes this his aim, he will contribute to the world's happiness and to the restfulness of his own spirit. 'Sweet peas on tiptoe for a flight' need not be grown prosaically between rows of sticks; and if the ruling grace' that tended Shelley's garden was too ethereal for mortal imitation, her spirit still haunts the gardener's ideal.

The reaction against the traditional formal garden set in during the early part of the eighteenth century. Increased formality-and that often of a vulgar and puerile character-had come in the train of the Dutch dynasty. The work of the great masters of their craft had been debased in its passage through feeble hands, and fell a ready prey to the destructive criticism which was the fashion of the hour. Horace Walpole had little difficulty in bringing ridicule upon the taste which condescended to embellish our gardens with 'giants, animals, monsters, coats of arms, mottoes in yew, box, and holly.' These were the stock-in-trade of the London gardeners of the day, who dealt in fine-cut greens and clipt yews in the shape of birds, dogs, men, and ships.' Pope lent the aid of his raillery, and the tribe of critics and essayists extolled the charms of Nature, which were not powerful enough, however, to entice them from their congenial coffee-houses. The world seems to have grown captious and to have outlived its enthusiasms as we contrast the well-poised phrases of Addison with the joyous outburst of Gerarde: "Go forwarde in the name of God; graffe, set, plant, nourishe up trees in every corner of your ground.' Revolution was in the air. There was a craving for deliverance from dogmatic laws. Had the apostles of freedom been