Editor's Preface 



the earth and it shall teach thee, and the 

 fishes of the sea and they shall declare to 

 thee" 'This is exactly what he seems to 

 have done ; he went straight to the flowers 

 — for the most pari the commonest every-day 

 flowers — and asked them to tell him the secret 

 of their beauty, and he got his answer, and 

 the answer was, that there was not a line 

 of colour in any fart, not an outline in any 

 petal, not a curve in any leaf, that could be 

 spared or altered; every such line of colour, 

 outline, and curve had its work to do and 

 did it, not only in the best, but in the only 

 possible way. He must have worked long, 

 and steadily and patiently, but he had his 

 reward; when he found out the secret of 

 beauty in one plant, he found in it also the 

 key to the beauty in another ; the study of 

 the Purple Crocus in his Nottingham meadows, 

 or of the Golden Crocus in his garden, helped 

 him to find analogies of beauty in the Snow- 

 drop, Snowflake, Lily, and Daf'odil; and he 

 had his further reward in the pleasant 

 memories of the beauties he had studied, 

 which enabled him to enjoy them, and to 

 write of them even in his sick-room and on 

 his death - bed, from which he wrote the 



