I am afraid that the hopeful instructions on 'wild gardening'so cheerfully laid down by Mr. Robinson must be taken with a great many grains of salt when it comes to putting them into practice, especially in dry soils. With care, labour, knowledge, and space, exquisite gardens may be laid out, suitable to the various soils of England; but, in my experience, even the best planting goes off without renewal of the soil. This shows itself with the happy possessors of these so-called 'wild gardens' by the constant desire to extend them into pastures new. Mr. Robinson's description of a garden at Weybridge ought to open the eyes of everybody as to what can be done in light soils. All I wish to point out is that merely buying the plants and sticking them in does not make a wild garden. No one can look at Mr. Parsons' beautiful drawings of the Evening Primrose and the Giant Cow Parsley without longing to grow such things. But the first essentials are space and isolation; they are worth nothing if crowded up.

1875. 'The Vegetable Garden,'by M. M. Vilmorin-Andrieux. English edition published under the direction of W. Robinson. This is one of the books mentioned in January as indispensable to anyone who wishes to be up-to-date or to grow special vegetables in the kitchen garden. The illustrations are from the French edition, and, though not artistic, are admirably drawn, and give one quickly an intimate knowledge of the shape and growth of vegetables, whether they be roots or plants.

The first edition of the now far-famed 'English Flower Garden 'came out in 1883, and the one published this year (1896) is the sixth edition. It has been immensely added to, and the present illustrations are among the most beautiful modern wood-cuts I know. It is said that books are now written to be read and understood by the village idiot. If this be so, I must own that the first and second editions, with their quantity of small, gardener's catalogue illustrations of the plants and flowers, are more helpful to the ignorant amateur than is this beautiful illustrating of, let us say, a branch of Hawthorn or a fullblown Tea-rose. This seems a cruel criticism of a beautiful book; and it should never be forgotten that the fault lies with the ignorant amateur, not with the new edition.

'God's Acre Beautiful, or The Cemeteries of the Future'is a strong plea for cremation. My edition is the third, published in 1883. Everyone interested in the subject ought to read it. The picture, at the end of the book, of a section of a pauper corner in a London cemetery is, I think, enough to convert anybody; but it does not seem to me that the practice of cremation is gaining much ground. The recent sweeping-away of West End London cemeteries contrasts badly, even from the point of view of sentiment, with the tombs at Pompeii used for urns; the chapter referring to these is headed 'Permanent, Unpolluted, Inviolate.'That is certainly not the modern cemetery !

In 1892 Mr. Robinson published two lectures of considerable severity, called 'Garden Design'and 'Architects' Gardens.' These lectures were mainly directed against two books; one, that seemed to contradict all Mr. Robinson's work, was 'The Formal Garden in England,'by Reginald Blomfield and T. Inigo Thomas. The fact is, that near large and stately houses there must be some kind of formal laying-out of the ground, even if ever so informally planted (Mr. Robinson himself would be the first to recognise this), unless everything is sacrificed to stateliness, and turf alone is admitted. The whole discussion is full of interest to those who possess large places. The next book on which Mr. Robinson pours the vials of his wrath (I love righteous indignation on one's pet subject) is 'Garden Craft, Old and New,'by John D. Sedding. Of all Mr. Robinson's books, the 'English Flower Garden 'will always remain his masterpiece; and I repeat here, what I said in January, that no modern gardener can get on without it. Every village club should have it, as well as his first-rate little halfpenny paper, 'Cottage Gardening,' which has many useful things in it besides gardening.

Anyone who can remember the gardening of the last thirty years will have no difficulty in recognising all that we owe to Mr. Robinson. His untiring energy, the pains he has taken to bring his books up to the highest and most complete standard of useful knowledge and reference, his newspapers (the coloured illustrations of which come nearer the excellence of the old coloured engravings than those in any other modern periodical), and, above all, the true taste and knowledge he has brought to bear on English gardening are influencing the whole of Europe, America, and our colonies; for he has headed the movement in the right direction, teaching the true principles of the laying-out of gardens and the preservation and cultivation of plants and flowers.

I have (bound) a great many years' numbers of 'The Garden 'newspaper. To look over them is endlessly interesting and suggestive, though it is apt to be discouraging, as so many plants are mentioned that we have not got and would like to have.

1872. 'Flowers and Gardens,'by Forbes Watson. This is the only break I make in my resolve to mention no book not in my possession. My reasons for doing so are that it has long been out of print, and that I want to make a short extract from it. So far as I know, this was the first of a long series of books-not so much practical gardening books, as books about the garden as a whole and the way in which the grouping and growing of plants affect the individual writer. An attractive, suggestive, and pathetic little book, written by a sick man to beguile days he knew to be his last. Mr. Watson was perhaps the last of the men who combined the three callings of doctor, botanist, and gardener. What he writes is much in advance of the feeling of the day, and it is full of what we now think quite the right tone about gardening. In the following quotation he expresses better than I can do it what I want to say. He begins: 'solon declared that to be the best of Governments in which an injury done to the meanest subject is an insult to the whole community.