Dr. Johnson calls portrait painting "that art which is employed in diffusing friendship, in reviving tenderness, in quickening the affections of the absent, and continuing the presence of the dead." The horticultural intercourse that now passes between England and France, induces one to express a wish, that the portraits of many of those delightful writers on this science, whose pens have adorned France, (justly termed from its climate _la terre classique d'horticulture_), were selected and engraved; for many of their portraits have never yet been engraved. If this selection were accompanied with a few brief notices of them and their works, it would induce many in this country to peruse some of the most fascinating productions that ever issued from the press. Amongst so many, whose portraits and memoirs would interest us, I will mention those of Champier, who distinguished himself at the battle of Aignadel, and who published at Lyons, in 1533, Campus Elisius Galliæ amenitate referens; Charles Etienne, who, in 1529, produced his Prædium Rusticum; and who with Leibault published the Maison Rustique, of which upwards of thirty editions have been published, (and which our Gervase Markham calls _a work of infinite excellencie_); Paulmier de Grenlemesnil, a most estimable man, physician to Charles IX., and who died at Caen in 1588, and wrote a treatise de Vino et Pomaceo; and the only act of whose long life that one regrets is, that his great skill was the means of re-establishing the health of Charles, who, with his mother, directed the horrid Massacre of St. Bartholomew; Cousin, who died in the prison of Besançon, and wrote De Hortorum laudibus; that patriarch of agriculture and of horticulture, Olivier de Serres, whose sage and philosophic mind composed a work rich with the most profound reflections, and whose genius and merit were so warmly patronized by "le bon Henri," and no less by Sully;[2] Boyceau, intendant of the gardens of Louis XIII., who, in 1638, published Traité du Jardinage, selon les raisons de la nature, et de l'art, avec divers desseins de parterres, pelouses, bosquets, &c.; André Mollet, who wrote Le Jardin de plaisir, &c.; Claude Mollet, head gardener to Henry IV. and Louis XIII., who, in 1595, planted the gardens of Saint Germain-en-laye, Monceau, and Fontainbleau, and whose name and memory (as Mr. Loudon observes), has been too much forgotten; Bornefond, author of Jardinier François, et délices de la campagne; Louis Liger, of consummate experience in the florist's art, "auteur d'un grand nombre d'ouvrages sur l'agriculture, et le jardinage," and one of whose works was thought not unworthy of being revised by London and Wise, and of whose interesting works the Biographie Universelle (in 52 tomes) gives a long list, and mentions the great sale which his Jardinier fleuriste once had; Morin, the florist, mentioned by Evelyn, and whose garden contained ten thousand tulips; the