The royal Arms were said to have surmounted the great iron gateway; but they had vanished, either with the family, or at the indications of an approaching rust.
Rust defiled its bars; but, when you looked through them, the splendour of an unrivalled garden gave vivid signs of youth, and of the taste of an orderly, laborious, and cunning hand.
The garden was under Mrs.Fleming's charge.

The joy of her love for it was written on its lustrous beds, as poets write.

She had the poetic passion for flowers.

Perhaps her taste may now seem questionable.

She cherished the old-fashioned delight in tulips; the house was reached on a gravel-path between rows of tulips, rich with one natural blush, or freaked by art.