he work, might increase its value. When Jane returned
the book, she asked its owner whether it had been translated into
English. The reply was, that the original work had only been published
a few weeks, and could not yet be well known in England. This
determined Isabella at once to make the trial. The drawings were the
most important and the most difficult part; but by the interest and
assistance of a few friends, Isabella obtained access to some excellent
botanical works and plates. Many, indeed most of the flowers, she was
able to draw from nature during the eight months that the work was in
progress; and where the flowers were so rare as to be out of her reach
altogether, there was nothing to be done but to copy from the plates of
the original work. With the translation she took great pains, and here
Jane helped her. Jane had an excellent and well-cultivated taste, and
she was therefore well fitted to judge of style, and she assisted
Isabella to re-write and polish her translation, till no foreign idiom
could be detected, and till there was no trace of the stiffness or
poverty which characterises most versions from the French. When this
was done, Jane, who wrote a much better hand than Isabella, transcribed
it, by degrees, as the drawings were finished, one by one, so that the
work was complete as far as it went. At this time, only four drawings
and about twelve pages of copying remained to be done, and then it was
to try its fate in the hands of a London bookseller.

Charles was delighted with the plan, as Jane described it; but she would
not let him see the work till Isabella was present. She said that if it
did not answer she should be quite grieved, for that it had been the
object of chief interest to Isabella for many months, and she had been
unwearied in her application to it during all her leisure hours in that
time. They could form no idea of the sum it ought to bring them; but
Jane said she would not take less than ten guineas, and she hoped for
more. Charles shook his head, and was afraid she expected too much; but
he promised to take charge of it when he returned, if it could be
finished by that time, and to do all in his power to dispose of it
advantageously. He then enquired whether the five guineas which they
had already earned remained untouched; and on being told that it was to
lie by till they were rich enough to purchase a piano, or till some
unforeseen emergency should call it into use