didn't know how. So all I could think of
was to go half-way up the Aiguille de Varens, to gather St. Bruno's lilies;
and I made a great cluster of them, and put wild roses all around them as I
came down. I never saw anything so lovely; and I thought to present this to
her before dinner,--but when I got down, she had gone away to Chamouni. My
Fors always treated me like that, in affairs of the heart.

I had begun my studies of Alpine botany just eighteen years before, in
1842, by making a careful drawing of wood-sorrel at Chamouni; and bitterly
sorry I am, now, that the work was interrupted. For I drew, then, very
delicately; and should have made a pretty book if I could have got peace.
Even yet, I can manage my point a little, and would far rather be making
outlines of flowers, than writing; and I meant to have drawn every English
and Scottish wild flower, like this cluster of bog heather
opposite,[4]--back, and profile, and front. But 'Blackwood's {10}
Magazine,' with its insults to Turner, dragged me into controversy; and I
have not had, properly speaking, a day's peace since; so that in 1868 my
botanical studies were advanced only as far as the reader will see in next
chapter; and now, in 1874, must end altogether, I suppose, heavier thoughts
and work coming fast on me. So that, finding among my notebooks, two or
three, full of broken materials for the proposed work on flowers; and,
thinking they may be useful even as fragments, I am going to publish them
in their present state,--only let the reader note that while my other books
endeavour, and claim, so far as they reach, to give trustworthy knowledge
of their subjects, this one only shows how such knowledge may be obtained;
and it is little more than a history of efforts and plans,--but of both, I
believe, made in right methods.

One part of the book, however, will, I think, be found of permanent value.
Mr. Burgess has engraved on wood, in reduced size, with consummate skill,
some of the excellent old drawings in the Flora Danica, and has
interpreted, and facsimile'd, some of his own and my drawings from nature,
with a vigour and precision unsurpassed in woodcut illustration, which
render these outlines the best exercises in black and white I have yet been
able to {11} prepare for my drawing pupils. The larger engravings by Mr.
Allen may also be used with advantage as copies for drawings with pen or
sepia.

ROME, _10th May_ (_my father's birthday_).

I found th