Not only have limestone and sandstone, and even
    marble, grown green in time, but even the shrubs planted and then
    neglected have developed new kinds of beauty of their own. In some
    far-distant time some master-gardener of the Vissarions has tried to
    realize an idea--that of tiny plants that would grow just a little
    higher than the flowers, so that the effect of an uneven floral
    surface would be achieved without any hiding of anything in the
    garden seen from anywhere. 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. The effect is
    weird to the last degree, and I am sure that you will enjoy it. For
    myself, as you know, uncanny things hold no fear. I suppose it is
    that I have been up against so many different kinds of fears, or,
    rather, of things which for most people have terrors of their own,
    that I have come to have a contempt--not an active contempt, you
    know, but a tolerative contempt--for the whole family of them. And
    you, too, will enjoy yourself here famously, I know. You'll have to
    collect all the stories of such matters in our new world and make a
    new book of facts for the Psychical Research Society. It will be
    nice to see your own name on a title-page, won't it, Aunt Janet? _From Rupert Sent Leger_, _Vissarion_, _to Janet MacKelpie_, _Croom_. _January_ 30, 1907. MY DEAR AUNT JANET,

    I stopped writing last night--do you know why? Because I wanted to
    write more! This sounds a paradox, but it is true. The fact is
    that, as I go on telling you of this delightful place, I keep finding
    out new beauties myself. Broadly speaking, it _is all_ beautiful. In the long view or the little view--as the telescope or the
    microscope directs--it is all the same. Your eye can turn on nothing
    that does not entrance you. I was yesterday roaming about the upper
    part of time Castle, and came across some delightful nooks, which at
    once I became fond of, and already like them as if I had known them
    all my life. I felt at first a sense of greediness when I had
    appropriated to myself several rooms in different places--I who have
    never in my life had more than one room which I could call my
    own--and that only for a time! But when I slept on it the feeling
    changed, and its aspect is now not half bad. It is now under another
    classification--under a much more important label--_proprietorship_. If I were writing philosophy, I should here put in a cynical remark:

    "Selfishness is an appanage of poverty. It might appear in the
    stud-book as by 'Morals' out of 'Wants.'" I have now three bedrooms arranged as my own particular dens. One of
    the other two was also a choice of Uncle Roger's. It is at the top
    of one of the towers to the extreme east, and from it I can catch the
    first ray of light over the mountains. I slept in it last night, and
    when I woke, as in my travelling I was accustomed to do, at dawn, I
    saw from my bed through an open window--a small window, for it is in
    a fortress tower--the whole great expanse to the east. Not far off,
    and springing from the summit of a great ruin, where long ago a seed
    had fallen, rose a great silver-birch, and the half-transparent,
    drooping branches and hanging clusters of leaf broke the outline of
    the grey hills beyond, for the hills were, for a wonder, grey instead
    of blue. There was a mackerel sky, with the clouds dropping on the
    mountain-tops till you could hardly say which was which. It was a
    mackerel sky of a very bold and extraordinary kind--not a dish of
    mackerel, but a world of mackerel! The mountains are certainly most
    lovely. In this clear air they usually seem close at hand. It was
    only this morning, with the faint glimpse of the dawn whilst the
    night clouds were still unpierced by the sunlight, that I seemed to
    realize their greatness. I have seen the same enlightening effect of
    aerial perspective a few times before--in Colorado, in Upper India,
    in Thibet, and in the uplands amongst the Andes. There is certainly something in looking at things from above which
    tends to raise one's own self-esteem. From the height, inequalities
    simply disappear. This I have often felt on a big scale when
    ballooning, or, better still, from an aeroplane. Even here from the
    tower the outlook is somehow quite different from below. One
    realizes the place and all around it, not in detail, but as a whole. I shall certainly sleep up here occasionally, when you have come and
    we have settled down to our life as it is to be. I shall live in my
    own room downstairs, where I can have the intimacy of the garden. But I shall appreciate it all the more from now and again losing the
    sense of intimacy for a while, and surveying it without the sense of
    one's own self-importance. I hope you have started on that matter of the servants. For myself,
    I don't care a button whether or not there are any servants at all;
    but I know well that you won't come till you have made your
    arrangements regarding them! Another thing, Aunt Janet. You must
    not be killed with work here, and it is all so vast . . . Why can't
    you get some sort of secretary who will write your letters and do all
    that sort of thing for you? I know you won't have a man secretary;
    but there are lots of women now who can write shorthand and
    typewrite. You could doubtless get one in the clan--someone with a
    desire to better herself. I know you would make her happy here. If
    she is not too young, all the better; she will have learned to hold
    her tongue and mind her own business, and not be too inquisitive.