the garden was turfed over to form a croquet green, and Fleeming
became (I need scarce say) a very ardent player. He grew ardent,
too, in gardening. This he took up at first to please his wife,
having no natural inclination; but he had no sooner set his hand to
it, than, like everything else he touched, it became with him a
passion. He budded roses, he potted cuttings in the coach-house;
if there came a change of weather at night, he would rise out of
bed to protect his favourites; when he was thrown with a dull
companion, it was enough for him to discover in the man a fellow
gardener; on his travels, he would go out of his way to visit
nurseries and gather hints; and to the end of his life, after other
occupations prevented him putting his own hand to the spade, he
drew up a yearly programme for his gardener, in which all details
were regulated. He had begun by this time to write. His paper on
Darwin, which had the merit of convincing on one point the
philosopher himself, had indeed been written before this in London
lodgings; but his pen was not idle at Claygate; and it was here he
wrote (among other things) that review of 'FECUNDITY, FERTILITY,
STERILITY, AND ALLIED TOPICS,' which Dr. Matthews Duncan prefixed
by way of introduction to the second edition of the work. The mere
act of writing seems to cheer the vanity of the most incompetent;
but a correction accepted by Darwin, and a whole review borrowed
and reprinted by Matthews Duncan are compliments of a rare strain,
and to a man still unsuccessful must have been precious indeed.
There was yet a third of the same kind in store for him; and when
Munro himself owned that he had found instruction in the paper on
Lucretius, we may say that Fleeming had been crowned in the capitol
of reviewing.

Croquet, charades, Christmas magic lanterns for the village