ars joint-editor of the _Spectator_.

"Master and friend, whose ardent soul
Burns brighter as it nears the goal,
Whose indefatigable pen
Stirs envy in us younger men----"

So has Mr. Charles Graves addressed him, and so might others feel a
noble envy.

Great Bookham, less than a mile away, was once the home of another
writer. Fanny Burney lived there for four years after she had married
General d'Arblay, and the two of them with their baby, and an income of
L125, were superlatively happy. Here she wrote _Camilla_, which was to
build and to christen the house she lived in later, and it was from
Bookham that she set out to take the first bound copies to King George
and the Queen at Windsor. "About how much time did you give to it?"
asked the good-natured King, and "Are you much frightened? As much
frightened as you were before?" The Queen asked M. and Madame d'Arblay
to dine the next day, and in the interval the General, having been
introduced to the Queen's gardener at Frogmore, "a skilful and famous
botanist," consulted him seriously about the Bookham cabbages. M.
d'Arblay was a gardener of greater courage than science. His wife sends
her father a picture of the work done among the Bookham fruits and
flowers.

"Our garden," she writes, "is not yet quite the most profitable thing in
the world; but M. d'A. assures me it is to be the staff of our table and
existence." But M. d'Arblay had very little luck. He planted
strawberries hoping to gather fruit within three months, and was
disappointed:--

"Another time, too, with great labour, he cleared a considerable
compartment of weeds, and, when it looked clean and well, and he
showed his work to the gardener, the man said he had demolished an
asparagus bed! M. d'Arblay protested, however, nothing could look
more like _des mauvaises herbes_.

"His greatest passion is for transplanting. Everything we possess he
moves from one end of the garden to another, to produce better
effects. Roses take place of jessamines, jessamines of honeysuckles,
and honeysuckles of lilies, till they have all danced round as far
as the space allows; but whether the effect may not be a general
mortality, summer only can determine."

The picture of the General turning his sword into a reaping hook is even
more alluring:--

"I wish you had seen him yesterday, mowing down our hedge--with his
sabre, and with an air and attitud