2 i8 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN 



interesting portrait and biography of him in a little book 

 of his, published after his death, called ' Self-Instruction for 

 Young Gardeners.' As is frequently the case with men 

 whose whole mind is taken up with some absorbing 

 intellectual occupation, he neglected his own money 

 affairs, and at the time of his last illness he had to 

 make an appeal to his many friends and admirers for 

 funds to enable him to publish his great work, which 

 has not yet been superseded, though it calls for re-editing r 

 the ' Arboretum Botanicum,' of which more hereafter. 

 Mr. Loudon died on December 14, 1843, before he heard 

 of the kind way in which his friends had come forward 

 and responded to the appeal. His wife states that he 

 died on the anniversary of the death of Washington, thus 

 linking us on by an allusion to older times, which seem 

 to us so very long ago. 



The story of Mrs. London's marriage is rather interest- 

 ing. As a girl (1825) she wrote what she herself describes 

 as ' a strange, weird novel,' called ' The Mummy '- 

 perhaps the first of the prophetic stories that have been 

 so common in my time, the scene being laid in the twenty- 

 second century. Mr. Loudon was struck by a review of 

 this book, and read it. It made so deep an impression 

 on him that two or three years afterwards he expressed 

 to a friend his great wish to know the author, whom he 

 believed to be a man. An introduction was brought 

 about, which in a short time resulted in their marriage. 

 They lived in a charming house at Bayswater, which was 

 then quite in the country, and ' The Gardener's Magazine ' 

 alone brought him in 7501. a year. Soon after their 

 marriage they saw at Chester, in 1831, the first number 

 of Paxton's ' Horticultural Eegister,' the earliest rival to 

 * The Gardener's Magazine,' which gradually declined 

 from that time, and was given up immediately after Mr. 

 Loudon's death. The impetus given by Mr. Loudon's 



