The kaleidoscopic beds which remind us of Pallas Athene springing fully armed from the brain of Zeus, are at the outset the same as they will be four months later, when their glory will be ignominiously wheeled away to the rubbish heap. Day after day you look out from your window and there is no change—nothing but an eternal Oriental glare of scarlet and yellow. How can such a garden create ideas? Compare with this the garden of form. Here there is plenty to excite ideas and fire the imagination, for here you have life with all its changes and accidents, from the tender birth of the bud to the vigour of the mature plant, the loves of the flowers, and the happy ripening of the fruit, which is the mystery of maternity. No two days are alike; as they follow one another, each brings with it something new, some fresh beauty, some intimate revelation of Nature’s secrets. And when the year has nearly run its course, when the autumn leaves fall to the ground in a shower of gold such as that which broke through Danaë’s prison, there is no death or decay of the plant, no carting off to the _fosse commune_, but just a long, happy winter’s sleep, enviable as that of a dormouse resting in the sure hope of a glorious new birth when the first kiss of spring shall awaken the sleeping beauty in the wood. Colour, then, is of the East sensuous; form is of the West intellectual. It is, of course, a mere coincidence, and not a rule capable of being laid down; but as I was walking to-day in a garden of form with Mr. Phillips’ theory seething in my brain, I could not but be struck by noting that, besides our own native trees, by far the greater number of those that have been naturalized here for the sake of their shape are of Western origin; while, with the exception of the American oaks, those that we value for their gorgeous colouring—such, for instance, as the Japanese maples and vines—come to us from the East. It is hardly worth noticing, but it was certainly curious that, wherever I looked, there I saw form transported from the West. The caravans which crossed the Rocky Mountains in search of gold, not without leaving many skeletons by the way; the orchid hunters of the Amazon, braving sickness, fevers and poisoned arrows, have enriched our pleasaunces with treasures, not to speak of the brilliantly-coloured gems of which they were primarily in search, which, could our grandfathers, and even our fathers, come to life again, would make them open their eyes wide with astonishment, wondering whether some magician could have waved his wand over their cherished grounds, changing them into fairyland.