Views and Opinions Author:Ouida Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: GARDENS IN the charming essay called ' Caxtoniana' there is a passage on gardens which is supremely true, and which reminds us that whoever has a garden has o... more »ne chamber roofed by heaven in which the poet and philosopher can feel at home. This passage was written beside a bay-window opening on the stately and beautiful gardens of the great author's home: to few is it given to possess such; but of any garden a certain little kingdom may be made, be it only green enough and well removed from city noise. Even within cities, little gardens, such as may be seen in the Faubourg St Martin and the Marais, where the population is poorest and densest, may be charmingly pretty, and a great solace to those who care for and look on them; and it is these little nooks and corners of gardens which give so much of its joyous and glad aspect to the whole of Paris. The great beauty of Rome (now since the Italian occupation irrevocably destroyed) was in the gardens; the shadowy, noble, antique gardens, with the embalmed breath of the past on their air, and the eternal youthof their flowers running wild over funeral sepulchre and fortress wall. It is their gardens which make the ancient cities and towns of Belgium so full of repose, of friendliness, of the calm of Nature and the romance of history. Public gardens, like public parks, may be beautiful, useful, health-giving, pleasure-giving ; but still they must ever be public gardens : it is the private gardens, the green places dedicated to thought and to affection, which alone are lovable, and which alone make a home possible, even amidst the network of crowded streets. It would be difficult for a Thoreau or a Wordsworth, for Alfred Austin or for Alphonse Karr, to find much pleasure in a public garden even historic as that of the Luxembourg, won...« less