To that gaudy tangle of what gardens, after all, are meant to produce, in the decay of time, as we may think at first sight, the systematic, logical gardener put his meddlesome hand, and straightway all ran to seed; to genus and species and differentia, into formal classes, under general notions, and with--yes! with written labels fluttering on the stalks, instead of blossoms--a botanic or "physic" garden, as they used to say, instead of our flower-garden and orchard. And yet (it must be confessed on the other hand) what we actually see, see and hear, is more interesting than ever; the nineteenth century as compared with the first, with Plato's days or Homer's; the faces, the persons behind those masks which yet express so much, the flowers, or whatever it may happen to be they carry or [157] touch. The concrete, and that even as a visible thing, has gained immeasurably in richness and compass, in fineness, and interest towards us, by the process, of which those acts of generalisation, of reduction to class and generic type, have certainly been a part. And holding still to the concrete, the particular, to the visible or sensuous, if you will, last as first, thinking of that as essentially the one vital and lively thing, really worth our while in a short life, we may recognise sincerely what generalisation and abstraction have done or may do, are defensible as doing, just for that--for the particular gem or flower--what its proper service is to a mind in search, precisely, of a concrete and intuitive knowledge such as that.