208 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN 



preserved in our Admiralty that, when French ships were 

 captured in the war, any plants or seeds that were on 

 board for Madame Bonaparte were to be expedited. That 

 was a gracious order ; and gardening in those days meant 

 so much more than it does now. A flower blooming then 

 was an interesting event all over Europe, and the gentle 

 perfume of it rose and permeated through the smoke and 

 din of the Napoleonic wars. Nevertheless, there always 

 have been, and there always will be, those who would 

 rather sing the old French rhyme : 



Jardiner ne m'amuse guere, 

 Moi je voudrais faire la guerre. 



Redoute, the artist, in this fine Napoleonic book plays 

 only a secondary part to Ventenat : 



1805. (An XIV.) ' La Botanique de J. J. Rousseau, 

 ornee de soixante-cinq planches d'apres les peintures de 

 P. J. Redoute.' Apparently Redoute brought out this 

 book to please himself, for it is a reprint of Rousseau's 

 1 Elementary Letters on Botany to a Lady.' It has 

 sixty-five such beautiful illustrative plates, exquisitely 

 drawn and colour-printed like the last. Were ever such 

 beautiful things done for those who wished to adapt 

 natural flowers to chintzes, needlework, or wall-papers ? 

 French artists, no matter of what school or of what 

 period, always excel all others in the beauty of their 

 actual draughtsmanship. Among these illustrations there 

 is a very fine old-fashioned dark-red single Chrys- 

 anthemum called As tre de Chine : I have never seen any- 

 thing in the least like it growing. The Daisy and the 

 Dandelion, too were they ever more beautifully or more 

 sympathetically rendered ? Everything done is in honour 

 of botany, nothing as a representation of a flower worth 

 growing. The text is in French. 



My other Redoute book is a very charming one, though 

 my large octavo edition is, alas ! not the best, which is a 



