Editor's Preface 

 f 



would surely have taken a high rank among 

 English authors. The language is everywhere 

 clear and concise^ so that there is never any 

 mistaking his meaning-^ and though he was 

 evidently both a traveller and a great reader^ 

 there is no padding^ no display *~ of book 

 learning^ and a very marked absence of 

 technical scientific language. It is quite de- 

 lightful to read a book on Flowers and 

 Gardens so entirely free from the numberless 

 hackneyed quotations which generally over- 

 burden such books; and he must have put 

 much restraint upon himself in keeping clear 

 of such additions. This is very marked in 

 his references to Ruskin, whom he reverenced 

 as "the greatest and best of art teachers" 

 yet though we may see Ruskin's influence 

 there is not a single passage from his works. 

 It is this that makes the book so fresh and 

 original: it is all his own; he wrote ^ not to 

 make a pretty book^ but to help others to find 

 the same delights that had brightened his 

 life; and his object has been gained^ though 

 he did not live to know of it. 



1 The beauty of his language is in every page, but I 

 would specially call attention to his fine description of the 

 scorner,p. 162,- and of the real beauty of decay, p. 199. 

 xv b 



