THE FELLOWS’ GARDEN, MERTON COLLEGE
The portion of this garden shown is bounded by the south-east portion of the old City Wall, with one or two bastions still remaining, and the terrace walk formed on a mound level with the top of the steps, shown in the picture, commands a fine view of Christ Church Meadows and the Broad Walk. A grand avenue of lime trees is on the left, where at a lower level is placed an armillary sphere.
The time is near sunset.
Hoc nemus ...
Quis deus incertum est, habitat deus.
At such times the folded gloom gives up the tale of the past most willingly.
The casual stranger sees little in the garden but neatness and repose. He may notice how luckily the few trees occur, and what warmth the shrubbery bestows, when they are black with rain and the crocus petals are spilt in silence. In a little while he may be privileged to learn what a great space for the eye, and especially for the imagination, the unknown gardener has contrived out of a few roods of high-walled grass. He will perhaps end by remarking that an acre is more than so many square yards, and by supposing that it is unique because it is academic.
But it is no merely academic charm that keeps him there, whether the sun in October is so bright on the frosty grass that the dead leaves disappear when they fall,—or on a spring evening the great chestnut expands; its beauty and magnitude are as things newly and triumphantly acquired; and it fills the whole space of sky, and in a few minutes the constellations hang in its branches.
It is rather perfect than academic; a garden of which the most would say that, after their own, it is the best. Its shape and size are accidents, for it embraces the sites of an old hall, a graveyard, and an orchard of Elizabeth’s time; and the expert mole might here and there discover traces of a dozen successive fashions since it was clipped and carved by a dialist and[Pg 420] peppered with tulips. But a thoughtful conservatism and a partnership between many generations have given it an indubitable style. The place has, as it were, a nationality, and the inevitable boundaries are apparently the finishing-strokes of the picture and not its aboriginal frame. Yet it is no natural garden into which any one may stroll and scatter the ends of cigarettes. A strong customary law is expressed by the very aspect of the place. Hence, part of it is still sacred to the statelier leisure of the dons. Hence, where any one can go, whether by right, or from a lack of beadles, it is the good fortune of every one to find himself alone when he reaches the spot. Even so, the trees have never quite their just tribute of dignity and ceremonial. They would be pleased to welcome back the days when Shenstone could only visit Jago secretly, because he wore a servitor’s gown; when even Gibbon remembered with satisfaction “the velvet cap and silk gown which distinguish a gentleman commoner from a plebeian student”; and when, within living memory, the “correct thing for the quiet, gentlemanly undergraduate was a black frock-coat and tall hat, with the neatest of gloves and boots,” on his country walk. The garden, when its borders were in scrolls, knots, and volutes, was certainly not among