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...a tasteful gardener will be ever meddling, will keep the
borders raw, and take the bloom off nature. Close adjoining, if
you are in the south, an olive-yard, if in the north, a swarded
apple-orchard reaching to the stream, completes your miniature
domain; but this is perhaps best entered through a door in the high
fruit-wall; so that you close the door behind you on your sunny
plots, your hedges and evergreen jungle, when you go down to watch
the apples falling in the pool.
It is a golden maxim to cultivate the garden for the nose, and the eyes will take care of themselves.
Nor must the ear be forgotten: without birds a garden is a prison-
yard. There is a garden near Marseilles on a steep hill-side,
walking by which, upon a sunny morning, your ear will suddenly be
ravished with a burst of small and very cheerful singing: some
score of cages being set out there to sun their occupants. This is
a heavenly surprise to any passer-by; but the price paid, to keep
so many ardent and winged creatures from their liberty, will make
the luxury too dear for any...
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Excerpt from Essays of Travel ·
This quote is about gardening and gardens ·
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A bit about Stevenson, Robert Louis ...
Robert Louis (Balfour) Stevenson (November 13 1850 - December 3 1894), was a Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer, and a leading representative of Neo-romanticism in English literature. He was the man who "seemed to pick the right word up on the point of his pen, like a man playing spillikins", as G. K. Chesterton put it. He was also greatly admired by many authors such as Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling, Vladimir Nabokov and others. Most modernist writers dismissed him, however, because he was popular and did not write within their narrow definition of literature. It is only recently that critics have begun to look beyond Stevenson's popularity and allow him a place in the canon.
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