besides! In my fond recollection they all bloom at once, irrespective of
time and season.

To see and smell and pick all these for the first time at the
susceptible age of five! To inherit such a kingdom after five years of
Gower Street and Bedford Square! For all things are relative, and
everything depends upon the point of view. To the owner of Chatsworth
(and to his gardeners) my beautiful French Garden would have seemed a
small affair.

[Illustration: LE P'TIT ANGLAIS.]

And what a world of insects--Chatsworth could not beat _these_ (indeed,
is no doubt sadly lacking in them)--beautiful, interesting, comic,
grotesque, and terrible; from the proud humble-bee to the earwig and his
cousin, the devil's coach-horse; and all those rampant, many footed
things that pullulate in damp and darkness under big flat stones. To
think that I have been friends with all these--roses and centipedes and
all--and then to think that most of my outer life has been spent between
bare whitewashed walls, with never even a flea or a spider to be friends
with again!

Our house (where, by-the-way, I had been born five years before), an old
yellow house with green shutters and Mansard-roofs of slate, stood
between this garden and the street--a long winding street, roughly
flagged, with oil-lamps suspended across at long intervals; these lamps
were let down with pulleys at dusk, replenished and lit, and then hauled
up again to make darkness visible for a few hours on nights when the
moon was away.