xxv LOVE FOR THE GARDEN 471 



It was of this he wrote on October I : 



Thank Heaven we are settled down again and I can vibrate 

 between my beloved books and even more beloved saxifrages. 



The additions to the house are great improvements every 

 way, outside and in, and when the conservatory is finished we 

 shall be quite palatial ; but, alas, of all my box-trees only one 

 remains green, that is the " amari," or more properly " fusci ' : 

 aliquid. 



Sad thing's will happen, however. Although the local 

 florists vowed that the box-trees would not stand the winds, 

 of Eastbourne, he was set on seeing if he could not get them 

 to grow despite the gardeners, whom he had once or twice 

 found false prophets. But this time they were right. Vain 

 were watering and mulching and all the arts of the husband- 

 man. The trees turned browner and browner every day, 

 and the little avenue from terrace to terrace had to be 

 ignominiously uprooted and removed. 



A sad blow this, worse even than the following : 



A lovely clematis in full flower, which I had spent hours in 

 nailing up, has just died suddenly. I am more inconsolable than 

 Jonah ! 



He answers some gardening chaff of Sir Michael 

 Foster's : 



Wait till I cut you out at the Horticultural, I have not made 

 up my mind what to compete in yet. Look out when I do ! 



And when the latter offered to propose him for that 

 Society, he replied : 



Proud an' 'appy should I be to belong to the Horticultural if 

 you will see to it. Could send specimens of nailing up creepers 

 if qualification is required. 



After his long battlings for his early loves of science and 

 liberty of thought, his later love of the tranquil garden 

 seemed in harmony with the dignified rest from struggle. 

 To those who thought of the past and the present, there 

 was something touching in the sight of the old man whose 

 unquenched fires now lent a gentler glow to the peaceful 



