GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



beautifully bright and quite hot. The pear and cherry blossom 

 are going off, and spring will soon have slid into summer, though 

 the lilac is to come." With greater brevity he expresses the same 

 idea in " The Earthly Paradise " : 



" When April tide was melting into May." 



It was characteristic of Morris to remark upon the weather. 

 "It is a hottish close morning," he wrote once in June, " rather 

 dull with London smoke ; I have just been down the garden to 

 see how things were doing, and find that they are getting on. Not 

 so many slugs and snails by a long way, and the new-planted things 

 are growing now ; the sweet peas promising well, the peonies in 

 bud, as well as the scarlet poppies." 



This habit of close observation, his joy in work, and nature, and 

 in growing things, his intense vitality, and untiring energy, explain 

 how it was that William Morris accomplished in a generation 

 nothing less than the renaissance of the practical and decorative 

 arts. 



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