Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

Modern Gardening- Books. — In the month of March I finished noticing the books in my possession up to the end of the last century. I begin again with this century, and shall carry them down to the present day. 1803. (An XI.) 'Le Jardin de la Malmaison.' By Ventenat. Illustrated by P. J. Bedoute. In two folio volumes. This is one of my great possessions — a hand- some book, sumptuously produced, as was likely to be at the time, dedicated as it is to Madame Bonaparte, just at the height of her power and influence. The implied flattery in the dedication to her is as large and magnificent as the paper is beautiful and the printing perfect. On the title-page is a little motto in' Latin, saying that if the praises of the woods are to be sung, the woods should be worthy of the Consul. The book is an obvious imitation of Jacquin's ' Flora Schoenbrunnensis.' The illustrations are, I think, less artistic and certainly less strong than Jacquin's. They are not hand-coloured, like his, but are very fine examples of the best and most delicate (then newly discovered) method of colour-printing. The reason why Kedoute^s work is artistically inferior to Jacquin's is, that in his delicate rendering of the flowering branch he always puts it exactly in the centre of the page, without reference to its size or growth. The plates are at the end of each volume, and the descriptive text, which is in French, at the beginning. Poor Josephine ! She was so fond of her gardens ; and I am told there is still an order 208 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN preserved in our Admiralty that, when French ships were captured in the war, any plants or seeds that were on board for Madame Bonaparte were to be expedited. That was a gracious order ; and gardening in those days meant so much more than it does now. A flower blooming then was an interesting event all over Europe, and the gentle perfume of it rose and permeated through the smoke and din of the Napoleonic wars. Nevertheless, there always have been, and there always will be, those who would rather sing the old French rhyme : Jardiner ne m'amuse guere, Moi je voudrais faire la guerre. Redoute, the artist, in this fine Napoleonic book plays only a secondary part to Ventenat : 1805. (An XIV.) ' La Botanique de J. J. Rousseau, ornee de soixante-cinq planches d'apres les peintures de P. J. Redoute.' Apparently Redoute brought out this book to please himself, for it is a reprint of Rousseau's 1 Elementary Letters on Botany to a Lady.' It has sixty-five such beautiful illustrative plates, exquisitely drawn and colour-printed like the last. Were ever such beautiful things done for those who wished to adapt natural flowers to chintzes, needlework, or wall-papers ? French artists, no matter of what school or of what period, always excel all others in the beauty of their actual draughtsmanship. Among these illustrations there is a very fine old-fashioned dark-red single Chrys- anthemum called As tre de Chine : I have never seen any- thing in the least like it growing. The Daisy and the Dandelion, too — were they ever more beautifully or more sympathetically rendered ? Everything done is in honour of botany, nothing as a representation of a flower worth growing. The text is in French. My other Redoute book is a very charming one, though my large octavo edition is, alas ! not the best, which is a NOVEMBER 209