But next morning, though the weather was as fine, and the wheelbarrow and the brick-bats and the genial workmen were there, and all the scents and sights and sounds were the same, the first fine careless rapture was not to be caught again, and the glory and the freshness had departed. Thus did I, on the very dawning of life, reach at a single tide the high-water-mark of my earthly bliss--never to be reached again by me on this side of the ivory gate--and discover that to make the perfection of human happiness endure there must be something more than a sweet French garden, a small French wheelbarrow, and a nice little English boy who spoke French and had the love of approbation--a fourth dimension is required. I found it in due time. But if there were no more enchanted hours like the first, there were to be seven happy years that have the quality of enchantment as I look back on them. * * * * * Oh, the beautiful garden! Roses, nasturtiums and convolvulus, wallflowers, sweet-pease and carnations, marigolds and sunflowers, dahlias and pansies and hollyhocks and poppies, and Heaven knows what besides! In my fond recollection they all bloom at once, irrespective of time and season. To see and smell and pick all these for the first time at the susceptible age of five! To inherit such a kingdom after five years of Gower Street and Bedford Square! For all things are relative, and everything depends upon the point of view. To the owner of Chatsworth (and to his gardeners) my beautiful French Garden would have seemed a small affair. [Illustration: LE P'TIT ANGLAIS.] And what a world of insects--Chatsworth could not beat _these_ (indeed, is no doubt sadly lacking in them)--beautiful, interesting, comic, grotesque, and terrible; from the proud humble-bee to the earwig and his cousin, the devil's coach-horse; and all those rampant, many footed things that pullulate in damp and darkness under big flat stones. To think that I have been friends with all these--roses and centipedes and all--and then to think that most of my outer life has been spent between bare whitewashed walls, with never even a flea or a spider to be friends with again! Our house (where, by-the-way, I had been born five years before), an old yellow house with green shutters and Mansard-roofs of slate, stood between this garden and the street--a long winding street, roughly flagged, with oil-lamps suspended across at long intervals; these lamps were let down with pulleys at dusk, replenished and lit, and then hauled up again to make darkness visible for a few hours on nights when the moon was away.