The Four Gardens. By Handasyde, illustrated by Ch. Robinson. (W.
Heinemann. lls. net.)—There is a wholesome fragrance about these garden sketches that is very pleasant. Each of the four has a character of its own, but each leads us naturally to the next, as do the colours in a well-planned garden. The first of them, called a "Haunted Garden," tells of a ghost, one of whose manifestations is new, at any rate to the present writer. It walked through a blocked-up doorway in an old wall, and it wore a pathway through a bed of mint. "In the border against the wall it grew luxuriantly at either side, but just before the door it was always thin and bare, as though the constant footsteps of someone going in and out had worn it all away." The story is so convincingly told that one would like to hear if the ghost's feet left any impression on newly fallen snow. As the Scotch gardener said, " It's no that I'm caring for the mint, there's plenty mint; what I dinna like is thee bogle bodies makin' so free wi' yer faither's gairden." A sad little love story and flower folk-names are intertwined in the " Old-Fashioned Garden," Scotland and England are contrasted in the "Poor Man's Garden," while the fourth chapter tells of a worried millionaire whose kindness of heart will not allow him to keep bores out of his garden, and of Evelina, a delightfully natural child, who enjoys everything, including the most tiresome of visitors. We have nothing but good to say of the little blaek-and- white illustrations, but the coloured ones are sad examples of their process. What could be less like the clear red of a strawberry for instance, than those in the picture opposite page 124?
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