I did hope to have got to the end of the Compositæ with the end of 1882; but I shall hardly do more than finish the Helenioideæ. As I go on, I study all Mexican border things, at least these of our North American collectors.
My health is excellent; so I may fairly hope to get the North American Compositæ off my hands and in print, barring accidents, and I shall be careful of my bones, and other contingencies....
TO J. D. HOOKER.
May 1, 1883.
... I have not read Carlyle’s Life, by Froude, but many articles, in which of course the points are mostly given. All seem to agree that Froude has blackened the memory of Carlyle irrecoverably, or rather with rude hand wiped off the whitewash which covered the blackness. He was a rude, unkempt soul. From the extracts I have seen, I fancy that Mrs. Carlyle’s letters beat Carlyle’s all out for raciness and pith.
I am content with the Romane correspondence as R. leaves it, and pleased with Romane’s tone, which I will try to tell him.
I think his first reply was a “beating of the air.” And for that reason I returned to the charge. His second is to the purpose. And he seems to feel that mine was to the purpose also.
... As to dear Bentham, his life is the very ideal of a naturalist’s life, and I have always regarded it one of the happiest possible and one of the most successful.... His administration of the Linnæan, his series of addresses, etc., will be looked back to as an oasis in the desert.
Our spring is late; the winter, or rather the drought of the previous autumn, has been deadly on perennials, herbs and shrubs....
TO R. W. CHURCH.