for producing a smooth bare surface, whereon to reconstruct Nature; our effort should be to reverse their process. The essence of the Wild Garden is that it leaves Nature intact in all its essential features. Nature should not be forced, says Sir William Temple; 'great sums may be thrown away without effect or honour, if there want sense.' Nor should the eye be forced, for, as Repton points out, 'The eye of taste or experience hates compulsion, and turns away with disgust from every artificial means of attracting its notice.' We are bidden to believe that every ornament of a woman's dress is a survival of some article of use. A bridge should be so placed as to cross the water; and roads should follow the lie of the land, and not meander from sheer imbecility. So, too, everything should be congruous to the scene. A Chinese shoe will not fit an English foot, and a pagoda is an anomaly in an English landscape.

An eye for form as well as colour is indispensable for successful planting. A bold effect, ably conceived, will be lost if the site be chosen without judgment. The little bays formed by trees and shrubs should not be blocked by a mass of tall flowers. The intrinsic beauty of their form will not, however, be marred by a carpet of dwarf vegetation. Erect stiff plants should not occupy the ridge of a bank while the shrubs which would have drooped over it are relegated to positions where their tendency becomes an eyesore. Nature loves mystery, and a glimpse of colour through the brushwood is often more attractive than an unobstructed vista. Plants lose by repetition, especially if they recur at measured distances. The habit of the eye is to take in one object at a time, and it should not be distracted. A group of lilies against the dark foliage of an evergreen needs no adjunct. The sum of the matter is that the eye unconsciously searches out points of vantage. It should be the effort of forethought to see that it has a pleasing object whereon to rest.

If it be true that every woman who puts a ribbon in her bonnet incurs a responsibility to society, a similar remark may be made of the world of flowers. The laws of colour must remain a sealed book to those who are afflicted with colour blindness. There are others who in dress, in furniture, and even in the arrangement of a bowl of flowers, show a nice discrimination, but who seem to leave their taste behind them when they close the front door. A pattern-bed might be made much more effectively in any other material than flowers; and in that case its designers would produce a work of art. Yet a violent contrast of crude colour seems to cause them no pain; and because it is consecrated by custom, the regulation red, blue, and yellow Vol. 191.-No. 381.

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of geranium, lobelia, and calceolaria is held to be a pleasant relief to the eye. But when did Nature ever grow a formal mass of scarlet or crimson and fence it in with a thin blue line, and then in sheer wilfulness balance it by an equal quantity of yellow? God Almighty planted the first garden,' and somehow in her painting of coppice or moor or meadow Nature never goes wrong. Here we shall obtain lessons in colour more easy of appreciation than the laws laid down by art. Nature employs a bold contrast at times, but her rule is harmony; and much of the secret of her success lies in the abundant drapery of green by which she veils and softens her colours.

The association of such flowers as tritoma and the rosecoloured Japanese anemone, and a delicate harmony chosen from the perennial phloxes, make a pleasing blend as summer wanes. Then pass from the sunlight to some cool glade in the coppice or shrubbery, and mark the effect of Honorine Jobert,' the white-flowered Japanese anemone, gleaming against the dusky shadows, the appropriate home, throughout the changing seasons, of lilies of the valley, monkshood, columbine, and larkspurs, of white lilies, ferns, and saxifrages-not one of which seems out of tone. Here it must be remarked that not every flower which a delicate sense of colour would place in the half light is patient of this treatment. The tender yellow of some of the evening primroses is beautiful as they open in the twilight; but the plant loves to bask in the sunshine. As the low-toned flowers suit the shade, the warm yellows, scarlet, crimson, and orange, are enhanced by the sun's rays. In a climate such as ours, masses of dead white should be sparingly used. As a relief to the darker purples and lilac their employment is desirable. Simplicity and broad effects should be the object aimed at, a result attainable by the massing of kindred tints.

'I like your essays,' said Henry III to Montaigne. Then, sire, you will like me-I am my essays.' And what is gardening but a series of essays written in the book of art and nature? Here, as elsewhere, the style is the man. When Bacon pauses in laying out his artificial garden to ordain that there should be 'mounts' whence to look out on the distant country, and a 'desert or heath' planted not in any order,' he proves that the world had not been able to kill all the wild joy of Nature. But it is where man is left alone with Nature that the impress of his individuality is chiefly apparent. Here the eye for form and colour must make good its claim under new conditions, and bold effects must take the place of

the niggler's puny scroll-work. It is the test of a man's intimacy with the lore of Nature and of the accord which subsists between them. And-so the genius loci be not disturbed the man who grows two flowers where one grew before is a benefactor to his kind.

We need not fear the development of that bucolic mind which is said to come of turnips and fat cattle. Diocletian could wield the Empire of Rome, and Cromwell a kingdom which was somewhat akin to it; but both loved their flowers. As the Laureate said recently of Burns: One hand on the plough and the other on the harp, that is the ideal life.' The busy hand that plants in hope or succours some sufferer, leaves the mind free. From Bacon's stately eulogy to the last essay on gardening-commendable for its spirit, if not always for its literary merit-there is evidence of the same constraining impulse to give thanks for an indwelling source of happiness. We may feel with Renan that the task is not a thankless one: 'La fleur, c'est l'acte d'adoration que fait la terre à un amant invisible, selon un rite toujours le même.' In the Wild Garden there is no room for ostentation and that desire to distance one's neighbours which is beginning to take the zest out of honest enjoyment. The varying conditions which dictate and make possible a Wild Garden scarce invite comparison. Here there are no carnation clubs, nor the latest rose, restricted by a fancy price, so that the wealthy may boast for a year or two of its exclusive possession. Here we need fear 'no enemy but winter and rough weather'-no competitor but Nature; and we may disarm her by turning pupil. Nature is commanded by obeying her.'

That a garden is the last retreat of the solitary and the sad is only a fraction of the truth. To the motley crew of her worshippers* the Court of Flora is always open, and, best of all, to the poor. The man who feels that his 'craving for the ideal has grown to a fine lunacy,' may plead that he gardens for something to do; but in truth he only obeys the law of his birth. Those on whom the sweet compulsion is laid must needs comply. And if it be true that no bad man loves flowers, may we not learn a whole sermon full of charity when

* The devoted gardener, who wishes to know what has been said or sung by a multitude of authors-ancient, mediæval, and modern-about his favourite pursuit, will find ample encouragement in Mr. A. F. Sieveking's book, 'The Praise of Gardens' (Dent and Co.), a second edition of which, recently published, has come into our hands since this article was put into type. The new edition contains so much fresh matter (including especially an historical 'Epilogue,' with many illustrations of formal gardens') as to be almost a new book.

we see that Puritan and Cavalier, Tory and Radical, meet here in the truce of God?

There is an underlying meaning in the saying that flowers grow only for those who love them. We will not press the thought beyond the point to which anyone would wish to carry it. If we deny humanity to what we call the inanimate world, we may translate it into our dealings with what some deem the only creatures of God's hand. The blessing is on him that considereth the poor; and the poor are the weak. The eye that is quick to note, and the hand to aid, will carry the habit beyond the precincts of the garden. Where compulsion hardens or sours, the sunshine of sympathy will develope. It may be said this needs much knowledge. So does knowledge of character; and how few of us are really developed. What was destined for a goodly plant too often grows dwarfed or awry. Consult their tastes; for tastes, to those who have them, are the requirements of healthy life. Place them where they are happy,' i.e. where Nature designed them to be, and, having marked the result, apply the same treatment to the human plant. Take some clytie from its gloomy corner and place it where it can turn lovingly to the Sun God, and let some modest flower that droops beneath the glare of day seek its congenial retirement. Of those which were killed by misapprehension of their needs, or which never knew what it was to live, we can only say in hope:

'In Eden every flower is blown.'

For ourselves, if we are wise, the mournful song of Horace will be often in our ears, 'Linquenda tellus.' We must leave our earthly home; and if none of the trees we tended so lovingly follow us to the grave except the cypress, what of that? The heir may not be ungrateful. Some sap of the old stock may flow through the branches, and he may have noted that we cherished with especial care some tree that a dead hand had planted. We need not be greedy of statues; our memory is a living one. The seed we have sown will not perish from the earth; for when Nature, half reluctantly, resumes her wonted course, she will gather in her nosegay the flowers we brought her. Now they are dead,' says Victor Hugo, 'they are dead, but the flowers last always.'

ART. VI.-1. The London Commissariat. Quarterly Review: London: John Murray, September 1854.

2. Annual Statement of the Trade of the United Kingdom with Foreign Countries and British Possessions, 1898 (C. 9300: 1899).

3. Life and Labour of the People in London. By Charles Booth. Vol. VII, part ii (Food and Drink). London: Macmillan and Co., 1896.

4. The Production and Consumption of Milk and Milk Products in Great Britain. By R. H. Rew. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. London: Stanford, June 1892.

5. Report of the Departmental Committee on Beer Materials (C. 9172: 1899).

6. Reports on the Metropolitan Water Supply. By MajorGeneral Scott. Annual Reports of Local Government Board, 1897-8 and 1898-9 (C. 8978: 1898; and C. 9444: 1899). 7. Family Budgets. Compiled by the Economic Club. London: King and Son, 1896.

And other reports and documents.

IN

ARTICLE II.

N the article on 'The Food of London' which appeared in the last number of the Quarterly Review, a description was attempted of the character and sources of supply of some of the chief staple articles which enter into the diet of Londoners. We there endeavoured to estimate, so far as the available data permit, the quantity of each article which is annually brought into London, and the proportions which are drawn from the United Kingdom, from the rest of the British Empire, and from foreign countries respectively. We also noted some of the changes which have come over the London food supply in recent years, both as regards the form in which the food materials arrive and the countries from which they are drawn ; and we compared, so far as possible, the present conditions with those prevailing in 1854, which were described in an article in the Quarterly Review of that year.

In this way we passed under review the annual London supply of wheat and flour, of cattle and meat, of fish, vegetables, and fruit. In the following pages it is proposed to complete the account by treating in a similar way the chief remaining classes of food and drink, such as milk and other dairy products, tea, coffee, sugar, and cocoa, water, beer, and wine. Some observations will be added on certain aspects of the London food problem as a whole, especially as regards the