_The Choice_.

Pomfret perhaps illustrates the general taste when he places his garden
"_near some fair town_." Our present laureate, though a truly inspired
poet, and a genuine lover of Nature even in her remotest retreats, has
the garden of his preference, "_not quite beyond the busy world_."

Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite
Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love,
News from the humming city comes to it
In sound of funeral or of marriage bells;
And sitting muffled in dark leaves you hear
The windy clanging of the minster clock;
Although between it and the garden lies
A league of grass.

Even "sounds inharmonious in themselves and harsh" are often pleasing
when mellowed by the space of air through which they pass.

'Tis distance lends enchantment to the _sound_.

Shelley, in one of his sweetest poems, speaking of a scene in the
neighbourhood of Naples, beautifully says:--

Like many a voice of one delight,
The winds, the birds, the ocean floods,
_The city's voice itself is soft_, like solitude's.

No doubt the feeling that we are _near_ the crowd but not _in_ it, may