dark! and the way the sun rushed up in the morning, as if he cried, like
a boy, "Here I am! The Father has sent me! Isn't it jolly!" I saw more
sun-rises that year than any year before or since. And the grass was so
thick and soft! There must be grass in heaven! And the roses, both wild
and tame, that grew together in the wilderness!--I think you would like
to hear about the wilderness.

When I grew to notice, and think, and put things together, I began to
wonder how the wilderness came there. I could understand that the
solemn garden, with its great yew-hedges and alleys, and its oddly cut
box-trees, was a survival of the stately old gardens haunted by ruffs and
farthingales; but the wilderness looked so much younger that I was
perplexed with it, especially as I saw nothing like it anywhere else. I
asked my uncle about it, and he explained that it was indeed after an old
fashion, but that he had himself made the wilderness, mostly with his own
hands, when he was young. This surprised me, for I had never seen him
touch a spade, and hardly ever saw him in the garden: when I did, I
always felt as if something was going to happen. He said he had in it
tried to copy the wilderness laid out by lord St. Alban's in his essays.
I found the volume, and soon came upon the essay, On Gardens. The passage
concerning the wilderness, gave me, and still gives me so much delight,
that I will transplant it like a rose-bush into this wilderness of mine,
hoping it will give like pleasure to my reader.

"For the heath, which was the third part of our plot, I wish it to be
framed, as much as may be, to a natural wildness. Trees I would have none
in it; but some thickets, made only of sweetbriar, and honnysuckle, and
some wild vine amongst; and the ground set with violets, strawberries,
and primroses. For these are sweet, and prosper in the shade. And these
to be in the heath, here and there not in any order. I like also little