'This was most true of Mr. Wilberforce's hour of daily exercise. Who that ever joined him in it cannot see him as he walked around his garden at Highwood? Now in animated and even playful conversation, and then drawing from his copious pockets a Psalter, a Horace, a Shakespeare, a Cowper, and reading, and reciting, or refreshing passages; and then catching a long-stored flower leaves as the wind blew them from a page, or standing before a favourite gum cistus to repair the loss. The he would point out the harmony of the tints, the beauty of the of the pencilling, the perfection of the colouring, and run up into all these ascriptions praise to the Almighty which were ever welling forth from his ever grateful heart. He loved flowers with all the simple delight of childhood. He would hover from bed to bed over his favourites; and when he came in, even from his shortest walk, deposited a few that he had gathered, safe in his room before joining the breakfast table.
Often he would say as he enjoyed their fragrance, "How good is God to us! What should we think of a friend who had furnished us with a magnificent house and all we needed, and then coming in to see that all has been provided according to his wishes, should be hurt to find that no scents had been placed in the rooms? Yet so has God dealth with us. Surely flowers are the smile of his goodness."'
The Life of William Wiberforce (1838) in Kevin Belmonte (Ed.), 365 Days with William Wilberforce, 25 January.
