working up significant form, being pricked with pins and needles of excitement, and is continually dancing on the hot-plate of rapture. The spectator’s duty when viewing a work of art is to come into touch with the mind of the artist. To do this no wonder the spectator has a bad time when digesting a whole gallery of post-impressionist pictures. Their religion is as bewildering as their art. For their moral vision is out of kilter, as their eyesight is out of focus. The aforesaid evangelist of the cult says: "I doubt whether the good artist bothers much more about the future than about the past. Why should artists bother about the fate of humanity? If art does not justify itself, æsthetic rapture does.... Rapture suffices. The artist has no more call to look forward than the lover in the arms of his mistress. There are moments in life that are ends to which the whole history of humanity would not be an extravagant means; of such are the moments of æsthetic ecstasy." We return to the garden, for the lure of a garden relaxes not. The joy of it entangles you in its toils. Each successive season of the year unfolds new developments which lead you on to the next season. So you are handed on from one month to another throughout the gardener’s calendar by endless enticements which keep the interest gently simmering. The procession of gay flowers that promenade the sheltered borders and disport themselves with flagrant pride on open beds during spring and summer days, tricked in rainbow colours, dazzle the eye with splendour, win the heart’s endearment, and pay in noblest coin full recompense for the chill, dull toil given in grey winter hours. A lady friend who lived to a ripe old age said to me jocosely, "To be a good gardener you need a wooden back with an iron hinge to it, for you are bending and stooping all day long in the garden." Only by constant labour spent on the good brown earth can you become candidate for possession of this useful garden requisite, a wooden back with an iron hinge to it, or the neatest imitation offered on the market. In the garden you get in touch with Nature, breathe fresh air, cultivate a contented mind, and never stagnate in idleness or degenerate into ennui. Your body, inured to all weathers, escapes many little ills of the flesh, and gradually you harden into an iron constitution, which is the nearest earthly substitute to a wooden back hung on iron hinges. You never need remain indoors to smoke or sew or yawn because there is nothing doing in the garden: you can weed there the livelong day in the open. This lowly service offers immediate reward; it begets a healthy appetite at meal-times, and develops a night’s sound sleep, which is some pleasure no millionaire can buy with his millions. Weeding puzzles my blind gardener Emilio.