FEBRUARY 21 



snowdrop returns. I mean Forbes Watsons Flowers 

 and Gardens, a book published five-and-twenty years 

 ago, and which came with a pathetic interest, for it 

 was written on a deathbed of great suffering, and 

 which appealed at once to all readers by its charm- 

 ing style and beautiful thoughts, and was doubly 

 welcome to gardeners by the way in which he lovingly 

 pulled to pieces, as it were, the few flowers of which 

 he wrote, in order to find in them for his own great 

 delight, and to point out to others, the hidden beauties 

 which can only be found by those who love them as 

 he did. I do not intend to quote all he said about 

 the crocus or the snowdrop, for he has three chapters 

 on them, but any one who has read the book, and who 

 is now rejoicing in the spring beauties of his garden, 

 will thank me for reminding him of it. Few, perhaps, 

 can see in the flowers all that Forbes Watson saw in 

 them ; it is a remarkable instance of the way in which 

 a thoughtful man can read his own thoughts into 

 almost anything, and perhaps into flowers more than 

 anything else, if he is a lover of flowers. Tennyson, 

 in the Day Dream, says this may happen to any 

 man: 



* Any man that walks the mead, 



In bud, or blade, or bloom may find, 

 According as his humours lead, 

 A meaning suited to his mind.' 



