_Our Sentimental Garden_ (HEINEMANN) is one of the very pleasantest garden-books I have encountered. One reason for this is that it is about such a lot of other things besides gardens. Volumes that are exclusively devoted to what I might call horticultural hortation are apt to become oppressive. But AGNES and EGERTON CASTLE are persons far too sympathetic not to avoid this danger. Instead of lecturing, they talk with an engaging discursiveness that lures you from page to page, as it might from bed to border, were you an actual visitor in the exquisite Surrey garden that is their ostensible subject. One thing with them leads to another. "Lilacs," they say. "Ah, lilacs--" and immediately one of them is started upon a whole series of rambling, DU MAURIERISH recollections of school-days in Second Empire Paris. Kittens and Pekinese puppies, village types, politics (just a little) and Roman villas--all these are the themes of their happy talk. "The Garden Garrulous" they might have called the book; and I for one have found it infinitely charming. Not that shrewd hints upon the choice of roses, the marshalling of bulbs, and other such aspects of the theme proper are wanting. Moreover, what they tell of garden triumphs is at once realised for you by a prodigality of drawings scattered among the text, some glowing in a full page of colour, others in line alone, from the pencil and brush of Mr. CHARLES ROBINSON. Altogether a very gentle book, of which one may echo the hope expressed by the writers in their graceful preface that "some unquiet heart, labouring under the strain of long-drawn suspense," may find in it "a passing relaxation, a forgotten smile." * * * * *