NOVEMBER 235 



we owe to Mr. Robinson. His untiring energy, the 

 pains he has taken to bring his books up to the highest 

 and most complete standard of useful knowledge and 

 reference, his newspapers (the coloured illustrations of 

 which come nearer the excellence of the old coloured 

 engravings than those in any other modern periodical), 

 and, above all, the true taste and knowledge he has 

 brought to bear on English gardening are influencing 

 the whole of Europe, America, and our colonies; for 

 he has headed the movement in the right direction, 

 teaching the true principles of the laying-out of gardens 

 and the preservation and cultivation of plants and 

 flowers. 



I have (bound) a great many years' numbers of ' The 

 Garden ' newspaper. To look over them is endlessly 

 interesting and suggestive, though it is apt to be dis- 

 couraging, as so many plants are mentioned that we 

 have not got and would like to have. 



1872. ' Flowers and Gardens,' by Forbes Watson. 

 This is the only break I make in my resolve to mention 

 no book not in my possession. My reasons for doing so 

 are that it has long been out of print, and that I want to 

 make a short extract from it. So far as I know, this was 

 the first of a long series of books not so much practical 

 gardening books, as books about the garden as a whole 

 and the way in which the grouping and growing of plants 

 affect the individual writer. An attractive, suggestive, and 

 pathetic little book, written by a sick man to beguile days 

 he knew to be his last. Mr. Watson was perhaps the last 

 of the men who combined the three callings of doctor, 

 botanist, and gardener. What he writes is much in 

 advance of the feeling of the day, and it is full of what 

 we now think quite the right tone about gardening. In the 

 following quotation he expresses better than I can do it 

 what I want to say. He begins : ' Solon declared that to 



