This is only my reading of what has been from the effect of what is! In the long period of neglect the shrubs have outlived the flowers.

Nature has been doing her own work all the time in enforcing the survival of the fittest.

The shrubs have grown and grown, and have overtopped flower and weed, according to their inherent varieties of stature; to the effect that now you see irregularly scattered through the garden quite a number--for it is a big place--of vegetable products which from a landscape standpoint have something of the general effect of statues without the cramping feeling of detail.

Whoever it was that laid out that part of the garden or made the choice of items, must have taken pains to get strange specimens, for all those taller shrubs are in special colours, mostly yellow or white--white cypress, white holly, yellow yew, grey-golden box, silver juniper, variegated maple, spiraea, and numbers of dwarf shrubs whose names I don't know.

I only know that when the moon shines--and this, my dear Aunt Janet, is the very land of moonlight itself!--they all look ghastly pale.