Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

into men and women, with the temptations and trials that life must always bring, we recall our own youth, and a feeling of responsibility, almost of awe, comes over us. Anyone who has gone through the ages would know what I mean. To forgive and excuse the mistakes and faults of life is a very different thing from helping the young out of the strait way. It has been truly said that it is all very well to sneer at commonplace morality in the abstract ; but the moment it is a question of any young people who are dear to us, we cannot help desiring it for them, though we may have laughed at it for ourselves. Then the young think the old uncharitable, narrow- minded, and unkind ; but they are not so. One of the saddest things in life is the isolation of the old. They can partly understand the young, but the young never can understand them, for are they not far away along a road the young have never seen ? Strange, is it not, that of the myriads who Before us passed the door of darkness through, Not one returns to tell us of the road, Which, to discover, we must travel too ? Omar Khayyam. APPENDIX JAPANESE ART OF ARRANGING CUT FLOWERS1 IT is now some years since Mr. J. Conder's excellent book, ' The Flowers of Japan and the Art of Floral Arrangement,' was first published. But the principles laid down in it have so little penetrated the art of cut-flower arrangements in England that it may be assumed either that the book is still very little known or that its teaching has been set down as unsuited to English flowers and flower-vases. The book is not published in England, but almost any bookseller will get it from Japan ; the cost is 2Z. 2s. The coloured plates, to which chiefly this high price is due, do not materially contribute to the expounding of the theory and, although full of character and beauty in themselves, could be omitted without loss to the main object of the book. A smaller and much cheaper edition of the work could then be produced and published in England.3 1 From the Garden of October 6, 1894. 2 Mr. Conder has lately published three articles on the same subject in the October, December '96, and January '97 numbers of the Studio — that unusually artistic magazine which is to be had monthly for one shilling. Mr. Conder's articles are beautifully illustrated with numerous plates of Japanese designs, reproduced from photographs ; and in the text he sums up many of the most interesting points contained in his book. He does not suggest that the art of which he writes could be applied to the arrangement of cut flowers in England, but it is to be hoped that these articles — which are, unfortunately, already out of print — may be re- published in book form. The great beauty of the illustrations would do more to spread the practice of the art amongst English people than any written theory upon it. — C. L., March 1897. A A 354 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN