CHAPTEK XLIII 



RETIKBMENT, TO 1897 I OF BOOKS AND OPINIONS 



FROM the wide variety of topics touched upon in the more 

 personal part of the correspondence of this time, a few may 

 be chosen to illustrate the writer's enduring freshness of mind. 

 His letters differ in complexion according to the correspond- 

 ent. With the botanists, they deal in botanical science, 

 pure and applied, in travel and research, and scientific news. 

 With men of science who were old intimates, affectionate 

 freedom of personal topics enriches the tale of current activi- 

 ties. With friends whose common ground was mainly in 

 the general interests of life, easy talk on books, art, politics, 

 education public and private, social questions, are added to 

 the personalia, and with the surviving friends of his youth 

 the old time atmosphere envelops the evening of life with 

 the unfading reflections of its happiest morning colours. 



As to politics, suffice it to say that while at no time he took 

 an active part in them, his native caution, his love of continuity 

 and prudent discipline, led him to a moderate conservative 

 standpoint. The ideal democracy was non-existent, and of 

 democracy on the largest scale as he saw it, he wrote to his 

 friend Ayerst Hooker J (December 29, 1891) : 



I have just received from America a new life of Thomas 

 Hooker, short, but most instructive. I have given it to 

 Eeggie to read and send on to you. It attributes to said 

 Thomas the source of the democratic Institutions of America, 

 but in no wise reconciles me to it. A democracy sounds 

 very well for a uniformly educated people ; but when the 



1 A member of another branch of the Hooker family descended from John 

 Vowell, alias Hoker, Chamberlain of the City of Exeter, 1554 (uncle and patron 

 of Richard Hooker), who was also the ancestor of Sir J. D. Hooker. 



323 



