Editor's Preface 



would surely have taken a high rank among 

 English authors, "the language is everywhere 

 clear and concise, so that there is never any 

 mistaking his meaning ; ^ and though he was 

 evidently both a traveller and a great reader, 

 there is no padding, no display of book 

 learning, and a very marked absence of 

 technical scientific language. It is quite de- 

 lightful to read a book on Flowers and 

 Gardens so entirely free from the numberless 

 hackneyed quotations which generally over- 

 burden such books ; and he must have put 

 much restraint upon himself in keeping clear 

 of such additions. This is very marked in 

 his references to Ruskin, whom he reverenced 

 as " the greatest and best of art teachers," 

 yet though we may see RuskirCs influence 

 there is not a single passage from his works. 

 It is this that makes the book so fresh and 

 original : it is all his own ; he wrote, not to 

 make a pretty book, but to help others to find 

 the same delights that had brightened his 

 life; and his object has been gained, though 

 he did not live to know of it. 



^ The beauty of his language is in every page, but I 

 would specially call attention to his fine description of the 

 scorner,p. \i>i; and of the real beauty of decay, p. 199. 

 XV b 



