I sit under an ilex-tree in an old Tuscan garden which in course of many generations has belonged to many owners. A haunting beauty fills the ancient place, which one can feel, but cannot understand. A friendly atmosphere that pervades old gardens saturates the solitude. It is more than atmosphere, it is influence--a caressing influence almost human that holds us up and tantalizes. Vague ancestral memories of old families flash upon the mind; for more than four hundred years men and women have walked and talked and thought in this Tuscan garden of mine, and tended its flowers and enjoyed its tranquillity. Children have played in it, often going to bed tired and happy after romping in it the livelong day, and so generation after generation mankind repeats itself in the life-story of the old garden on a Tuscan hillside. The spirit of the past haunts it in shadow and in sunshine, because wherever men have been they leave a little of themselves behind in ghostly exhalations. When one is in a contemplative humour a garden is full of object-lessons interesting to study. By dint of watching leaf replace leaf, insects come into life and die, blossoms change into fruit, fruit ripen and fall, the swallows come with the daffodils and depart when the hunter’s moon frightens them away--by watching these things methodically and silently accomplishing their allotted tasks, I have come to think about myself with brave resolution and resigned conformity to natural laws. I grieve less over myself when I regard the change which is universal; the setting sun and the dying summer help me also to decline gently. Life is a splendid heritage to hold in fee, but we quit and deliver up possession when our lease expires. The light must be kept burning if our own little taper flickers into darkness. A young girl visited us in Florence one spring-time. She lived in the garden among the flowers, caressed them, talked to them, and gathered them by the handful, the armful, the basketful. She decorated the rooms with flowers, filled glass bowls and bronze vases with flowers, and her art touched its zenith in glorifying the dinner-table every evening with the choicest of them all. She chatted, smiled, and sang whilst doing it, for she dearly loved the flowers that she fondled. We took her to the Uffizi to see the world-renowned Old Masters there; but she yawned in front of masterpieces of art, and her eyes wandered round searching the smart costumes of the ladies in the room. We took her to Rome and showed her the sights of the Eternal City, but Bond Street and Regent Street interested her more than St. Peter’s and the Coliseum. We visited the Forum with its ruined temples and triumphal arches, and trod the Via Sacra; but the place was only an old stoneyard to her, devoid of interest, so we left her to herself, and she wandered over the Forum on other pleasure bent, and we found her afterwards picking violets amongst the ruins.