mpathized with the spirits
of every living creature that God had made to play therein, or to
blossom in its sunshine or shade.

They had lost their dearly-loved younger sister, Margaret, before I
knew them. Mary and Susie, alike in benevolence, serenity, and
practical judgment, were yet widely different, nay, almost contrary,
in tone and impulse of intellect. Both of them capable of
understanding whatever women should know, the elder was yet chiefly
interested in the course of immediate English business, policy, and
progressive science, while Susie lived an aerial and enchanted life,
possessing all the highest joys of imagination, while she yielded to
none of its deceits, sicknesses, or errors. She saw, and felt, and
believed all good, as it had ever been, and was to be, in the reality
and eternity of its goodness, with the acceptance and the hope of a
child; the least things were treasures to her, and her moments fuller
of joy than some people's days.

What she had been to me, in the days and years when other friendship
has been failing, and others' "loving, mere folly," the reader will
enough see from these letters, written certainly for her only, but
from which she has permitted my Master of the Rural Industries at
Loughrigg, Albert Fleming, to choose what he thinks, among the
tendrils of clinging thought, and mossy cups for dew in the Garden of
Herbs where Love is, may be trusted to the memorial sympathy of the
readers of "Frondes Agrestes."

J. R.

BRANTWOOD,
_June, 1887_.

INTRODUCTION.

Often during those visits to the Thwaite which have grown to be the
best-spent hours of my later years, I have urged my dear friend Miss
Beever to open to the larger world the pleasant paths of this her
Garden Inclosed. The inner circle of her friends knew that she had a
goodly store of Mr. Ruskin's letters, extending over many years. She
for her part had long desired to share with others the pleasure these
letters had given her, but she shrank from the fatigue of selecting
and arranging them. It was, therefore, with no small feeling of
satisfaction that I drove home from the Thwaite one day in February
last with a parcel containing nearly two thousand of these treasured
letters. I was gladdened also by generous permission, both from
Brantwood and the Thwaite, to choose what I liked best for
publication. The letters themselves are the fruit of t