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 gettingon. 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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