How grandly the tall Delphiniums grow in this strong soil. A little of the colour has been lost owing to technical difficulties of reproduction, for the blue is purer and stronger in effect both in the original picture and in nature than is here shown. They are grouped, as blue flowers need, with contrasts of yellow and orange; with yellow Daisies and the feathery Meadow-rue (_Thalictrum_), and the tall yellow Aconite and nearly white Campanulas, woolly Stachys and purple Bell-flowers beyond. Only one small patch of brighter colour, the scarlet of Lychnis chalcedonica, is allowed here. On the other side is the loose-growing and always pictorial white Mallow (_Sidalcea candida_), taking some weeks to produce its crop of flowers that, like Foxgloves and most of the flowers of the tall-spiked habit of growth, begin to bloom below, following upward till they finish at the top. Some sort of garden knowledge is so generally professed in these days, and so much more gardening of the better kind is being attempted, that people are gradually learning the advantage of planting in good groups of one thing at a time. The older way of putting one each of the same plant at regular intervals along a border--like buttons on a waistcoat--is now no longer tolerated, but a great deal has yet to be learnt. Even planting in bold groups, however good the plants, will be ineffective if not absolutely unfortunate, if relationships of colouring are not understood. The safest plan is to plant in harmonies more or less graduated as to the warm colours, such as full yellow with orange and scarlet, and to plant blues with contrasts of yellows and any white flowers. Then delightful effects may be obtained with masses of grey foliage, such as Lavender, Lavender-cotton, and Stachys, and white Pink, with flowers that have colourings of tender pink, white, lilac and purple. To acquire a colour eye is an education in itself, founded on the needful natural aptitude, a gift that is denied to some people even if they are not actually colour-blind. But it is a precious possession where it occurs, and all the better [Illustration: RAMSCLIFFE: LARKSPUR FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF MISS KENSIT] when it has been so well trained that the eye is enabled to appreciate the utmost refinements of colour-values, and when this education has been carried to the point necessary for the artist, of justly estimating the colour _as it appears to be_. This is the most difficult thing to learn; to see colour as it is, is quite easy; any one not colour-blind can do this; but to see it as it appears to be needs to be learnt, for upon this acquired proficiency depends the power of the artist to interpret the colours of objects and to represent them in their right relation to each other.