Jaxuary 29. 
COUNTEY GENTLEMAN’S COMEANION. 
809 
and addressed to tbe Society’s Council. Mr. Lindley 
admitted tliat he knew of the mismanagement, extrava¬ 
gance, and deceit for years, yet it never seems to have 
struck liim that it was his imperative duty, as the 
Society’s servant, to make known to it what lie knew 
was tending to its ruin. The only palliative for this 
glaring neglect of duty is, that ^Ir. Sabine had brought 
him forward; and it may be true, as INlr. Loudon said, 
that “with the active friendship of Jkir. Sabine, in no other 
ollicc or situation, in London or elsewhere, could Mr. 
Lindlc}' have enjoyed the same advantages, or advanced 
himself so nipidly as a man of the world, a man of 
science, and a gentleman.” 
Such palliation, however, is of but little force when 
we have before us the xinmitigated outpouring of reve¬ 
lations against Mr. Sabine, which IMr. Lindley made to 
the Committee of Inquiry. There wms no consideration 
then for his falling friend; the only anxiety was to 
escape from being involved in his fall, and to mount 
upon his ruin. If he had been actuated only by a 
virtuous indignation and sense of duty, why did he not 
reveal his avalanche of evils before? 
ISIr. Sabine fell; he retired from the Secretaryship, 
and was succeeded by IMr. Bentham, Mr. Lindley con¬ 
tinuing as his Assistant Secretary. “ We have no doubt,” 
said Mr. Loudon at the time, “ that the Society may 
linger on awhile, and we hope long enough to pay off 
all debts, and till IMr Lindley meets with something 
as good, or better, than the Vice-Secretaryship. As to 
the public, whether the Society dies a year sooner or 
later is a matter of no sort of consequence.” 
So thought not, however, Mr. Lindley, and his 
friends. Their object continued the same as Mr. Sa¬ 
bine’s, namely, to have the Society preserved as a high 
aristocratic association, and Mr. Loudon probed the 
chief ulcer which still afflicted the Society, when he 
said ho should have hoped more hopefully for 
it if IMr. Bentham and Mr. Lindley loved Gardening 
more than Botany. That they did not take warning 
from the errors, tyranies, and extravagancies, of the 
previous management is quite certain ; and if the Com¬ 
mittee of 1830 could be reassembled, we know of much 
of their former Eeport which would be equally applicable 
for any year in the succeeding quarter of a century. 
Mr. Lindley’s connection with the Horticultural 
Society, sustained by his undoubted great acquirements 
as a Botanist, aided his rapid u])ward progress. The 
Jlotiinicnl Jiegisler, established by Mr. Sydenham Ed¬ 
wards, in 1815, passed in 1820 to the editorship of Mr. 
Lindley, having previously been under the manage¬ 
ment of his friend ^Ir. Jlellenden Ker. 'i’ho sound 
knowledge he here exhibited, as well as in his liosarum 
Mona(jra])lda, and Synopsis of the British Flora, 
]mblishcd in 1820, fully justified the University of 
J.ondon in placing him in the Chair of Botany, from 
which, as Professor, ho delivered his Introductory liCC- 
ture at the close of April in 1829. In this he boldly 
made a stand in favour of the Natural System of 
Botany, and announced his intention of adopting it 
as the basis of his course of Instruction. IMr. Teget- 
meier says, in a letter now before us, “ I am a very 
old pupi'l of Dr. Lindley’s. Twenty years ago I 
took his gold medal at University College, and main¬ 
tained the superiority of his teaching by taking 
the silver botanical medal of the Apothecaries’ Com¬ 
pany, open to the competition of all the students in 
England. We have long been strangers; but I can 
truly say, as a lecturer, he was one of the best teachers 
I ever heard. Free and conversational in his manner, 
his matter was excellent, and methodically arranged. 
I entered his class with little knowledge of, and less 
liking for. Botany, and left it with the results that I 
have mentioned, having amongst my competitors, Dr. 
W. B. Carpenter, Dr. Lankester, Dr. jenner, &c.” 
In 1832 Mr, Lindley obtained a handle to his name, 
having procured from a German University the degree 
of “Doctor of Philoso})hy.” From that time he was 
known as Dr. landley. In 1838 he became Vice- 
Secretary of the Ilortieidtural Society—a post which he 
has ever since continued to hold. 
We have little more to chronicle of Dr. Lindley be¬ 
yond a list of his principal publications, in addition to 
those already noticed, and they deserve the general 
criticism that they are all excellent. 
In 1833 he published his Nixus plantarium (Approxi¬ 
mations of Plants), and in 1838, Flora Medico, and Ser- 
turn Orehidaeemn, besides reporting upon the short¬ 
comings at Few Gardens, a report which is one more 
testimony how very easy it is to detect the mote in a 
brother’s eye while wo are regardless of the beam in 
onr own. 
In 1839 appeared his Ladies’ Botany, and School 
Botany, and in 1810, his Theory of Horticulture — 
decidedly one of the best efforts to illuminate and direct 
practice by .gcience. 
In 1811 ho published his Elements of Botany, and in 
conjunction with IMr. Paxton and IMr. Dilcke, founded 
the Gardener’s Chronicle, over which he continues to 
preside as editor. The same year, also, he became Pro¬ 
fessor of Botany at the Eoyal Institution, and published, 
in conjunction with iMr. Hutton, The Fossil Flora of 
Great Britain. 
In 184(; appeared his largest and valuable work. The 
Veyetahle Kinydoni. 
We must here close our very im})erfect notes, and we 
will do so by expressing a hope that for many years to 
come our generation may benefit by the high botanical 
acquirements of Dr. Lindley ; but as fervently do we 
hope that he may not continue in the Secretariat of 
the Horticultural Society for as many days. He was 
brought up in tlio wrong school to be fitted for this. 
Pie never has forgotten the splendour of the Society 
under IMr. Sabine—that splendour wiien T3,100 were 
paid to Mr. Gunter for one repast at Chiswick—and he 
is equally the faithful disciple of the same gentleman’s 
doctrine—“look to the patrician order.” 
This wull not do now'; nor wms it a doctrine which, if 
acted upon, ever formed a broad, solid, and permanent 
basis for any Society. No Society in England is ever¬ 
green that is not ])lanted and cultivated by the middle 
classes, and Dr. Lindley neither in temperament nor in 
habits is calculated to win them to a Society’s subscrip¬ 
tion list. Much less is he so gifted as to win golden 
opinions fi'om the men of the spade. AVe have very 
abundant evidence of this ; but the following, which 
refers to a transaction whilst ho wms Assistant-Secretary 
of the Garden, may suffice as an illustration:— 
“ Did yon hear,” a writer asks of the first President of 
the Society,—“Did you hear of the poor man ^Yllo was 
set to taste three hundred and sixLy-livo sorts of Potatoes, 
at one sort per day, and then to write a description of the 
tlavour of each—a pigeon a day for a month tliey say kills a 
man—but to can’y the llavour of two shades of a Red Champion 
or an 0.v Noble on the tongue from one day to the next, so 
as to form an estimate of the difference of taste between each, 
and then to distinguish both from the taste of a Lady's 
Finycr, and so go on through the whole series, and write 
down iiis sensations in a journal, was loo much even for a 
poor Scotchman: he rebelled, and was dismissed as con¬ 
tumacious, after liaving tasted through a quarter of the taslc 
—at least so goes the stoiy, or rather so says the man.” 
