work of the great days of the papal millionaires or the frivolous reigns of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany. Often, indeed, various styles are mixed in one garden, but it is as easy as it is interesting to separate them.

Much of the charm of the old gardens in England and Scotland, which seem often to have been as fully the work of the owner as of the professional designer, lies in the individual touch with which they are endowed. They speak of long past summers of thought and loving care, of months and years spent in that pursuit, 'the inclination of kings, the choice of philosophers, a pleasure of the greatest, and the care of the meanest.' The impression that the garden has been really loved gives a charm that mere soulless copying, the revival of a fashion, the arbitrary adoption of the taste of another age, can never impart. You may arm yourself with the most correct plans, may order the finest balustrading, an unlimited supply of vases, the most expensive fountains, but the result is quite likely to be a failure, to be cold, heartless, and empty if the individual human touch, the sincere and understanding mind are lacking, and if some definite and truthful purpose does not inform the whole. What a strange and daring idea was that of the architect of Hadrian's villa to build a long straight wall, with a paved walk on either side, for the perfectly practical purpose of affording a shady or a sunny promenade at pleasure. The idea is so bald in its simplicity, and is carried out in so uncompromising a manner, that we cannot conceive the ordinary person venturing to adopt it, but no doubt it satisfied those critics of a more fastidious day, and it is still a surprise and a gratification.

The scope of Mr. Triggs's book only permits him to touch in merest outline upon the historical interest which adds, to an extent of which it is almost hopeless to gauge the intensity, to the fascination of these old villas. In that land of an old civilisation there is not a corner that is not vivified by histories and personalities, and many of those terraces and parterres have known the footfalls and the trailing skirts of men and women who haunt for us the chambers of Italy's past. Exquisite as these gardens are, what a magic is added to their beauty when we can people them with those who once walked in them, when we can sit in fancy with the kindly Cardinal of Ferrara under the cypresses of Este, listening to Tasso reading the 'Gerusalemme,' or picture the rugged figure of Michel Angelo mounting its terraced steps, or imagine Lorenzo de' Medici, most perfect of hosts, gathering round him Poliziano and Pico, Marsilio and the rest, on the loggia of Villa Medici, where we look down

4

on the self-same scene, with Arno winding past Bramante's dome and Giotto's tower, into the violet haze below Carrara. The long summer of two young lovers, Olimpia Borghese and Camillo Pamphilj, who spent their honeymoon in 1647 at Villa Farnese, while all Rome,' all their mannered and artificial world, 'marvelled at their taste,' adds a fragrance and a tender charm to the many memories enshrined in the solemn splendour of the deserted garden which looks down on Caprarola. Every garden in time stores up memories, and it is not for anyone to say that romance and sentiment may not gather round the bedded-out grassplot of the fifties and sixties or hallow the gravel of the Early Victorian 'sweep,' but just as a house collects more intimate associations than a landscape, so the sense of human tenancy will be more pronounced as the garden can be considered essentially a part of the house itself, endowed with that stability and defined purpose of design which marks it as the intelligent work and the habitation of men and women.

In the degree to which the garden thus enters into the life of man, gardening itself may be said to rise to the level of a fine art. It will be objected, perhaps, that in a climate like ours the garden can scarcely become quite so intimate a part of life as it can in Italy. Nevertheless, it may with due management become a sufficiently intimate part. For besides the summer months there are many days all through the year when it is pleasant to be in the garden. Whenever the right measures are taken, wherever there are to be found loggie and arbours facing the sun, with ramparts of clipped hedge shielding them from cold winds and sheltered alleys paved with brick or stone for walking, the number of days when it is pleasant to be in the garden is, of course, much increased, and the garden becomes closely associated with a full expression of life, and to that extent becomes more of a fine art. Thus to draw the garden into life is the ultimate ideal of the science of gardening. Carefully held in view, it must enforce upon every owner of a garden the need of a definite meaning for every alteration or addition carried out. Each must be an adaptation of the garden to life, and conduce to a closer intimacy between it and the dwellers in the house. Doubtless if this end were held more clearly in view we should have more in our garden of what is expressive and significant, less of what is incongruous and irrelevant. The success of such a project must depend in the long run on considerations having more to do with life than with gardening; for the life that is to inspire a garden with interest and significance must begin by being interesting and significant itself.

ART. VIII.-ADMIRALTY ADMINISTRATION

AND NAVAL POLICY.

1. Naval Policy: a Plea for the Study of War. By 'BARFLEUR.' London Blackwood. 1906. 8vo.

2. Memorandum Explanatory of the Programme of New Construction for 1905-1906. Parliamentary Paper. 1906. 3. Statement showing present Distribution of Business between the Various Members of the Board of Admiralty, dated October 20, 1904. Parliamentary Paper. 1905.

4. A Statement of Admiralty Policy. Parliamentary Paper. 1905.

5. The Naval Annual. Edited by the Hon. T. A. BRASSEY. London: Griffin. 1906. 8vo.

6. The Truth about the Navy. London: Chapman and Hall. 1906.

7. La Guerre Navale Moderne: de Lissa à Tsoushima. Par MICHEL MÉRYS, Lieutenant de Vaisseau en Retraite. Paris: 1906.

8. The Battle of Tsushima. By Captain VLADIMir Semenoff, one of the Survivors. Translated by Captain A. B. LINDSAY, 2nd King Edward's Own Gurkha Rifles. With a Preface by Sir GEORGE S. CLARKE, G.C.M.G. London: Murray. 1906.

IT is no new thing for the country to be disturbed by a violent controversy on the state of the Navy. That tide which governs the affairs of men affects this no less than other branches of our national life; and as our people have now again learnt how entirely dependent they are on the Navy, they have also accustomed themselves to dread the ebb of its fortunes, and to watch eagerly or even anxiously for the returning flow. The consequences of this are far from ideal. It would, in every way, be better that a uniform level of efficiency should be maintained than that such fluctuations should be allowed. But the history of centuries holds out little prospect of such a consummation, and indeed renders it almost impossible, by enabling us to forecast the approach of the ebb and so warning us to prepare for it. Periods of extraordinary effort thus normally tend to be followed by periods of neglect and false security, which continue until we rouse ourselves with a start on finding that the supremacy on which we have been fondly pluming ourselves is in danger of slipping from our nerveless grasp.

What follows is a matter of familiar experience. It is unnecessary here to refer in detail to the recurring history of naval 6 scares.'

To deny that the present agitation as to the naval outlook approaches to the dimensions of a 'scare' would be to profess ignorance of the nature of the pamphleteering campaign which is still in progress. There is no periodical, great or small, which is not affected by it. The newspapers of the breakfast table, the reviews of the clubs, even the society' journals teem with articles of more or less interest on naval topics; and the question which each seeks to answer after its kind is the one which we have heard so often: Is all well with the Navy? If we were conscious of a recent cold fit, there would be nothing to wonder at in this recrudescence of the old cry. But there has been no such cold fit; on the contrary, the Navy has, for some considerable time, been basking in the warmth of an unprecedented popularity, and even now the cry that the cold fit is on us is raised by only a fraction of those who profess anxiety. What, then, is the danger which threatens? By an almost unanimous consent, the matériel of the Navy has been advanced and developed to an extent hitherto unknown; we have had the regulations governing the personnel and whole life of the service radically modified; our attention has been specially and repeatedly directed to the redistribution of our fleets and squadrons; reform' has succeeded reform,' till there remains no branch of the service which has not cast the skin of a few years, nay, even of a few months ago; and the Government's professional advisers, the members of the Board of Admiralty, are still the men who have given us all these great things. What then, it might well be asked, should be amiss?

A first glance at the controversy scarcely tends to answer the question. The disputants are divided among themselves. Some will have it that the mischief lies in this, others in that direction; here, jealousy for the integrity of the two power standard is to be seen; there, lurks suspicion of the schemes which affect the levy and training of the personnel, while from yet another quarter are heard doubts as to the matériel of the fleet. Each of these criticisms is at once assailed by vehement and noisy contradictions, till we have a confusion which renders it difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between the essential and the accidental, or to find a clue of purpose in the tangle of cross issues. But reflection suggests that the main problem is really twofold, and that the questions before us may be briefly summarised thus: Is the two power' standard endangered? and Has the Admiralty rightly used its opportunities? As to the

former of these queries, this is not the time when it can be profitably discussed. There is already a tendency to introduce party rancour into the debate; and it should be the object of all who seek to influence public opinion, to hold the Navy, as a national institution, free from all partisan taint. This will be done most effectually as well as most profitably by directing attention to the second question, and asking whether it is not here that we must look for the chief cause of the vague anxiety which certainly exists. We believe that this will prove to be both the more important and the more comprehensive of the two; and if it shall appear that it is not only so, but that it virtually includes that on which we deprecate discussion, our preference for it will be the more abundantly justified.

We assume, then, for the present that our national safety is not threatened by any intention of the Government to allow the Navy to fall below the standard which experience has led us to believe should be maintained; and we may do this with the greater freedom since not even the most extreme pessimist declares the danger to be immediate. There are, no doubt, certain vague possibilities out of which such a danger might speedily arise; but for our present purpose it is sufficient to say that the prophets of ill have but sighted the spectre on the horizon, and are not yet agreed among themselves as to the length of time which must pass before we are brought face to face with it. But the numerous other topics which are introduced, relevantly or irrelevantly, consistently or inconsistently, into the other main branch of the discussion, all point to one conclusion: there is a distrust and suspicion of the naval advisers of the Government; not a potential, but an existing and wellformulated distrust. It is to the interest of the naval service and of the nation that the attempt should be made to examine how far this sentiment has spread, and what justification there exists for it.

In a letter to the Times' of June 5 last, Mr. Corbett advanced the interesting theory that the Admiralty is an old stock, which is not patient of radical measures, but on which new ideas may be grafted. If conducive to its welfare, they will thrive; if not, they will wither and die, leaving but a scar on the parent trunk. The true meaning of this would seem to be that the justification of every step taken by the Board must be sought in what has preceded it; that there must be continuity of policy; and that no undertaking, however showy, should be judged of itself alone, without reference to the conditions which prevailed at its birth. This is an important point which is too frequently forgotten. We have of late suffered severely from the dog