A Garden of Peace: A Medley in QuietudeMoore, Frank Frankfort
General
A Garden of Peace: A Medley in Quietude
Moore, Frank Frankfort
Gardens -- Fiction
But my good fortune did not end here; for a few years later a fine
keystone with a sculptured head of Ste. Ursula was dug up in the little
garden behind the site of the tiny church, and was presented to me with
the most important fragments of two deeply-carved capitals such as one
now and again sees at the entrance to a Saxon Church; and so at last
these precious relics of mediaeval piety are joined together after
a disjunctive interval of perhaps five or six hundred years, and,
moreover, on a spot not more than a few hundred feet from where they had
originally been placed.
Sir Martin Conway told some years ago of his remarkable discovery in the
grounds of an English country house, of one of the missing capitals of
Theodocius, with its carved acanthus leaves blown by the wind and the
monogram of Theodocius himself. A more astounding discovery than this
can hardly be imagined. No one connected with it was able to say how
it found its way to the place where it caught the eye of a trustworthy
antiquarian; and this fact suggested to me the advisability of attaching
an engraved label to such treasure trove, giving their history as far
as is known to the possessors. The interest attaching to them would be
thereby immensely increased, and it would save much useless conjecture
on the part of members of Antiquarian Societies. Some people seem to
think that paying a subscription to an Antiquarian Society makes one
a fully qualified antiquarian, just as some people fancy that being a
Royal Academician makes one a good painter.
The great revival in this country in the taste for the Formal Garden and
the Dutch Garden has brought about the introduction of an immense number
of sculptured pieces of decoration; and one feels that in the course
of lime our gardens will be as well furnished in this way as those of
Italy. The well-heads of various marbles, with all the old ironwork that
one sees nowadays in the yards of the importers, are as amazing as
the number of exquisite columns for pergolas, garden seats of the most
imposing character, vases of bronze as well as stone or marble, and
wall fountains. And I have no doubt that the importers would make any
purchaser acquainted with the place of origin of most of these. Of
course we knew pretty well by now where so many of the treasures of the
Villa Borghese are to be found; but there are hundreds of other pieces
of sixteenth and seventeenth century Italian work that arrive in
England, and quite as many that go to the United States, without any
historical record attached to them. I do hope that the buyers of
these lovely things will see how greatly their value and the interest
attaching to them would be increased by such memoranda of their origin.
The best symbol of Peace is a ploughshare that was once a sword; and
surely a garden that has been made in the Tiltyard of a Norman Castle
may be looked on as an emblem of the same Beatitude. That is how it
comes that every one who enters our garden cries,--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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