Take the books which have been written upon the subject; their name is legion. The women’s books, full of delicate charm, busy themselves for the most part with the marriage of colours, the blending of hues, the reconciliation of hostile shades. They are very clever, very ingenious, very attractive; but, setting on one side a few of the great lady writers, among whom Miss Willmott and Miss Jekyll are queens, they represent no more than the millinery of plants—the stockings to match the frock. Set against these the rugged masculine vigour of a writer like William Robinson, the man to whom, above all others, is due the notable improvement which has grown in horticultural taste during the last forty years. From him you will learn much, for he knows much, and he can teach it. If you have his book, “The English Flower Garden,” you will need no other, for it will give you all the knowledge which you require. Among the women’s books, as I have said, there are, of course, delightful exceptions; but of the bulk of them the best that can be said is that they are gentle and morally innocuous. For all that is delicate and charming and alluring, joined to many of the highest and robust qualities which adorn mankind, I have been all my life a worshipper of the Yin principle; but when it comes to gardening and the writing of books on gardening, give me the Yang, give me William Robinson. All men love trees, and it is small wonder that the sight of objects so beautiful should have led men to think of them with awe as under the special care, or even as the dwelling-places, of gods and goddesses; indeed, the connection of trees with religion is as old as the conception of the deity itself. North and south, east and west, we find the same idea. In the Scandinavian Sagas the mystic Ash Ygdrasil is the tree of life, of time, and of space. Its branches spread over the whole world and its top reaches above the heavens. Its roots strike in three directions: the one down to Hvergelmer, the well of the dragon Nidhug; the second to the fountain of Mimer, the source of wisdom and wit, for a drink of which Odin pawned his eye with Mimer; the third is in Asgard, close to the fountain of Urd the Norn of the Past, where the gods, riding over the Bifrodh Bridge—the rainbow—assemble to sit in judgment. Here dwell the three Norns: Urd the Norn of the Past, Verdande the Norn of the Present, and Skuld the Norn of the Future; and here they weave the web of fate for you and me and all mankind.