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THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

PRESENTED  BY 

PROF.  CHARLES  A.  KOFOID  AND 
MRS.  PRUDENCE  W.  KOFOID 


FLOWERS   AND    GARDENS 


FLOWERS    AND 
GARDENS 

NOTES   ON   PLANT   BEAUTY 


BY 

FORBES    WATSON 


EDITED,    WITH    A   PREFACE,    BY 

REV.    CANON     ELLACOMBE 

VICAR  OF   BITTON,    GLOUCESTERSHIRE 


JOHN  LANE:  THE  BODLEY  HEAD 
LONDON  AND  NEW  YORK    MDCCCCJ 


All  rights  reserved 


Printed  by  BALLANTYNE,  HANSON  &=  Co. 
At  the  Ballantyne  Press 


PREFACE 

THE  following  papers  have  been  written 
during  a  last  illness,  which  has  often 
made    it    impossible    to    examine    the 
specimens   I  could  have  wished.     In 
the  Primrose,  for   example,  I  have   only  been 
able    to    make    out   satisfactorily    the    drooping 
aspect   of  the   leaf:    how   this   combines   itself 
with  the  more  rigid  character  in  the  different 
stages  of  the  leaf  I  do   not  fully   understand. 
For  the  same  reason  many  of  the  illustrations, 
especially  in   the  chapters  on   Gardening,  have 
been  selected  as  being  the  most  ready  to  hand 

o  •/ 

rather  than  as  the  best.  In  my  remarks  on 
Gardening  I  have  no  wish  at  all  to  disparage 
the  modern  systems.  My  aim  chiefly  was  to 
point  out  the  faults  of  modern  gardening,  be- 
cause its  merits  are  such  as  it  is  impossible 
to  overlook.  Lastly,  in  many  instances  my 
remarks  bear  more  or  less  reference  to  the 
works  of  Ruskin,  the  greatest  and  best  of 


M363174 


Preface 

art-teachers ;  but  where  I  have  consciously 
borrowed  from  him,  I  have  said  so.  These 
papers  are  left  in  charge  of  a  friend  for 
publication. 

FORBES  WATSON. 


The  pen  fell  from  the  hand  of  my  friend 
when    he    had    written    the   foregoing    lines. 
Within    two    days   he    was    taken  "home"    to 
his    "Father's    house"      This    short    interval 
was  filled   with    intense    suffering,    save    only 
during    a    brief    sleep,    when    the   flowers   of 
which  he  had  been  writing,  and  which  loving 
hands  brought  to  blossom  near  his  bed,  haunted 
with  their  beauty  and  perfume  the  unsleeping 
sense    of    the    imagination,    and    lured    him 
through  enchanted  fields,  where  in  his  dream 
he  saw  vision  after  vision  of  an    unutterable 
glory  of  floral  splendour.      The  ecstasy  of  his 
delight  in   that  dream   abode   with   him,   and 
lifted  a  bright  light   over  the  few   hours   of 
agony  that  intervened  ere   he   slept  again   in 
the  peace  of  Death.      He   believed  a  foretaste 
had  been  given  him  of  "  that  which  remaineth 
for    them    that    love    God" — that   He   whose 
dying  lips  were  touched  with  gall  had  given 

him  a  sweeter  anodyne  in  his  brief  agony. 
vi 


Preface 

'The  papers  published  in  .this  little  volume 
were  written  to  solace  the  languor  of  the  last 
months  of  life,  when  a  malady,  which  had 
crept  by  slow  approaches  upon  him,  broke 
down  his  strength,  and  arrested  a  professional 
career  which  had  begun  but  recently.  'They 
betoken  a  mind  gifted  with  quick,  clear,  and 
delicate  perception,  independency  of  judgment, 
and  unsparing  truthfulness.  'These  were  my 
friend's  characteristic  gifts.  They  are  dimly 
mirrored  in  these  pages,  but  more  clearly  in 
the  memory  of  those  who  knew  him  well.  'To 
them  this  little  volume  will  be  welcome, 
because  of  him :  to  others,  perchance,  it  may 
be  welcome  for  the  worth  it  has,  because  it 
tells  of  the  beauty  there  is  in  God's  fairest 
frailest  handiwork  in  flowers,  and  bears  some 
trace  of  the  rarer  amaranthine  beauty  of  a 
soul  which  wore  "the  white  flower  of  a 
blameless  life." 

J.  B.  PATON. 


Vll 


EDITOR'S    PREFACE 

NEARLT   thirty  years    have  passed 
since  this  book  was  published.     At 
its    first    appearance    it    was   fully 
appreciated  by  a  few  persons^  among 
whom  Mr.   Bright,  the  author  of  a  "A  Tear 
in  a   Lancashire    Garden"    may    be   specially 
mentioned ;    but  it  has  long  been  out  of  print 
and  is  now  very  scarce^  so  that  the  time  for 
a  second  edition  seems  to  have  fully  come. 

For  it  is  not  a  book  that  should  be  buried 
or  forgotten.  In  many  respects  it  stands  quite 
alone  among  the  numberless  books  on  gardening 
and  flowers,  for  it  takes  a  special  line  of  its 
own,  in  which  it  really  remains  supreme ; 
a  few  authors  have  touched  upon  the  same 
line,  but  only  in  a  slight  sketchy  way  as  a 
small  part  of  the  larger  subjects  on  which 
they  were  writing,  and  a  few  have  attempted 
some  feeble  imitations  of  the  book  and  have 
failed  signally. 


IX 


Editor's  Preface 

The  particular  line  is  this — Forbes  Watson 
had  been  from  his  early  years  a  lover  of  flowers 
and  a  student  of  botany,  and  he  knew  a  great 
deal  of  the  scientific  structure  of  plants.  He 
knew  that  there  was  nothing  wasted  in  plant 
life,  and  that  each  stem  and  leaf  and  flower 
had  its  separate  functions  in  building  up  the 
life  of  the  plant.  But  to  his  artistic  mind 
there  was  something  in  stem  and  leaf  and 
flower  over  and  above  their  functions  in  the 
growth  of  the  plant;  there  was  beauty,  a 
thing  which  some  of  his  books  noticed,  but  of 
which  they  gave  no  account.  He  could  not 
stop  there,  he  was  a  deeply  religious  man, 
and  he  felt  that  nothing  was  made  in  vain, 
and  that  the  beauty  of  leaf  and  flower  had 
its  functions,  and  was  as  necessary  to  the  life 
of  the  plant  as  any  other  part  of  it.  So  he 
set  himself  to  learn  what  the  flowers  could 
tell  him  of  this  beauty  which  gladdened  his 
eyes,  but  which  he  felt  sure  could  be  made 
to  teach  him  more.  'Then  he  did  as  Job 
advised  his  friends  to  do  if  they  wanted  to 
know  "how  the  hand  of  the  Lord  hath 
wrought  all  this."  Job  said,  "  Ask  the  beasts 
and  they  shall  teach  thee ;  and  the  fowls  of 
the  air  and  they  shall  tell  thee;  speak  to 


Editor's  Preface 

the  earth  and  it  shall  teach  thee,  and  the 
fishes  of  the  sea  and  they  shall  declare  to 
thee"  'This  is  exactly  what  he  seems  to 
have  done ;  he  went  straight  to  the  flowers 
— -for  the  most  fart  the  commonest  every-day 
flowers — and  asked  them  to  tell  him  the  secret 
of  their  beauty r,  and  he  got  his  answer ',  and 
the  answer  was,  that  there  was  not  a  line 
of  colour  in  any  part,  not  an  outline  in  any 
petal,  not  a  curve  in  any  leaf,  that  could  be 
s fared  or  altered ;  every  such  line  of  colour, 
outline,  and  curve  had  its  work  to  do  and 
did  it,  not  only  in  the  best,  but  in  the  only 
possible  way.  He  must  have  worked  long, 
and  steadily  and  patiently,  but  he  had  his 
reward-,  when  he  found  out  the  secret  of 
beauty  in  one  plant,  he  found  in  it  also  the 
key  to  the  beauty  in  another ;  the  study  of 
the  Purple  Crocus  in  his  Nottingham  meadows, 
or  of  the  Golden  Crocus  in  his  garden,  helped 
him  to  find  analogies  of  beauty  in  the  Snow- 
drop, Snowflake,  Lily,  and  Daffodil;  and  he 
had  his  further  reward  in  the  pleasant 
memories  of  the  beauties  he  had  studied, 
which  enabled  him  to  enjoy  them,  and  to 
write  of  them  even  in  his  sick-room  and  on 
his  death  -  bed,  from  which  he  wrote  the 


Editor's  Preface 

last  lines  of  his  preface,  for  in  his  know- 
ledge of  the  secret  of  their  beauty  he  had 
found  real  joy  and  thankfulness  for  him- 
self. 

But  Forbes  Watson  was  not  only  a  student 
of  Plant-life  and  Plant-beauty ;  he  was  also  a 
gardener,  and  the  second  half  of  the  book 
"  On  Gardens"  was  the  most  powerful  ally 
that  natural  gardening  had  at  that  time,  and 
the  one  that  gave  the  most  important  help  in 
the  destruction  of  the  tyranny  of  bedding-out 
gardening.  If  it  did  not  give  the  actual 
death-blow,  it  certainly  gave  the  first  of  the 
death-blows  and  the  one  that  had  most  effect. 
What  that  tyranny  was  at  the  time  the  book 
was  published  few  can  nowadays  realise :  to 
have  hinted  a  doubt  that  bedding-out  garden- 
ing was  the  perfection  of  artistic  taste  was  to 
be  ranked  as  a  Philistine  heretic,  and  to 
have  suggested  its  destruction,  and  the  substi- 
tution of  any  other  style,  would  have  been 
considered  only  worthy  of  a  lunatic.  Even 
such  scientific  books  as  the  Botanical  Maga- 
zine, when  describing  hardy  plants,  gauged 
their  beauty  and  usefulness  by  their  fitness 
or  otherwise  for  carpet  beds.  Against  this 
system  Forbes  Watson  raised  his  voice,  and 


xn 


Editor's  Preface 

he  did  so  with  power,  because  he  was  able 
to  point  out  one  special  but  very  large  blot 
in  the  system.  He  showed  that  it  led  to  an 
utter  ignorance  of,  and  an  almost  wicked 
contempt  for,  the  beauty  of  individual  flowers. 
The  flower  in  itself  had  become  nothing,  it 
was  but  one  small  spot  in  a  large  mass  of 
colour,  and  had  no  value  except  in  so  far 
as  it  helped  the  mass.  His  words  were: 
"  Our  flower  beds  are  mere  masses  of  colour, 
instead  of  an  assemblage  of  living  beings : 
the  plant  is  never  old,  never  young,  it  de- 
generates from  a  plant  into  a  coloured  orna- 
ment" 'The  trumpet  gave  no  uncertain  sound, 
and  it  did  its  work  against  the  most  de- 
termined opposition — especially  from  gardeners 
and  nurserymen — and  one  thing  that  helped 
to  the  final  victory  was  his  often-repeated 
advice  to  study  and  love  the  wild  flowers. 
With  the  advocates  of  bedding-out  these  could 
have  no  place,  but  Forbes  Watson  showed  that 
the  study  of  plant  life  and  plant  beauty  could 
be  carried  on  without  the  help  of  grand 
exotics  or  Museum  Herbaria;  that  the  plant 
lover  would  find  all  he  wanted  in  the  fields 
and  hedgerows  of  his  own  land;  and  that 

the  more  he  studied  them  there,  the    more    he 
xiii 


Editor's  Preface 

would  love    the  plants    in    his   garaen ;    and 
so  would  become  a  better  gardener. 

I  said  that  Forbes  Watson  was  a  deeply 
religious  man :  his  religion  permeates  the  whole 
book,  and  indeed  is  the  key  to  a  great  deal  of 
what  he  says.  It  was  the  feeling  that  God 
had  made  everything  very  good  that  made 
him  love  His  works,  not  only  for  their  use- 
fulness, but  for  their  beauty.  'There  were  a 
few  instances  in  which  he  could  not  see  the 
beauty,  but  he  was  quite  sure  that  it  was 
there.  And  it  was  this  same  religious  feeling 
that  made  him  see  a  great  deal  which  others 
would  not  look  for.  It  has  been  said  that  the 
book  is  too  fanciful  and  sentimental,  especially 
in  attributing  to  flowers  such  characters  as 
purity,  passion,  innocence,  sensuousness,  &c.y 
but  it  is  the  bare  fact  that  Forbes  Watson 
saw  these  things,  and  because  he  saw  them, 
and  thought  it  almost  the  moral  duty  of  others 
to  see  the  same,  that  he  recorded  his  feelings ; 
the  flowers  had  been  real  teachers  of  good 
things  to  him,  and  he  felt  it  a  religious  duty 
to  hand  on  the  lessons  to  others. 

Something  must  be  said  about  the  literary 
style  of  the  book.  Had  his  life  been  spared 
and  he  had  given  himself  to  authorship,  he 


XIV 


Editor's  Preface 
f 

would  surely  have  taken  a  high  rank  among 
English  authors.  The  language  is  everywhere 
clear  and  concise^  so  that  there  is  never  any 
mistaking  his  meaning-^  and  though  he  was 
evidently  both  a  traveller  and  a  great  reader^ 
there  is  no  padding^  no  display  *~  of  book 
learning^  and  a  very  marked  absence  of 
technical  scientific  language.  It  is  quite  de- 
lightful to  read  a  book  on  Flowers  and 
Gardens  so  entirely  free  from  the  numberless 
hackneyed  quotations  which  generally  over- 
burden such  books;  and  he  must  have  put 
much  restraint  upon  himself  in  keeping  clear 
of  such  additions.  This  is  very  marked  in 
his  references  to  Ruskin,  whom  he  reverenced 
as  "the  greatest  and  best  of  art  teachers" 
yet  though  we  may  see  Ruskin's  influence 
there  is  not  a  single  passage  from  his  works. 
It  is  this  that  makes  the  book  so  fresh  and 
original:  it  is  all  his  own;  he  wrote  ^  not  to 
make  a  pretty  book^  but  to  help  others  to  find 
the  same  delights  that  had  brightened  his 
life;  and  his  object  has  been  gained^  though 
he  did  not  live  to  know  of  it. 

1  The  beauty  of  his  language  is  in  every  page,  but  I 
would  specially  call  attention  to  his  fine  description  of  the 
scorner,p.  162,-  and  of  the  real  beauty  of  decay,  p.  199. 
xv  b 


Editor's  Preface 

/  must  add  a  few  lines  on  my  share  in 
this  new  edition.  The  book  has  been  exactly 
reprinted  from  the  first  edition^  verbatim  and 
literatim,  with  the  exception  of  printers'  errors, 
so  that  no  alteration  has  been  made  in  the 
text;  but  I  have  thought  it  well  to  add  a 
few  short  footnotes  here  and  there^  mostly  in 
confirmation  of  what  Forbes  Watson  had 
written^  and  in  a  very  few  cases  in  correction. 

H.  N.  E. 

n^  March  25,  1901. 


xvi 


BIOGRAPHY 

FOR    the    facts    and    dates    in    the 
following    short    biography    I    am 
indebted  to  the  kindness  of  Forbes 
Watson's  brother,  Watson  Fother- 
gill,  Esq.,  of  Nottingham,  to  whom  I  re- 
turn my  best  thanks. 

Forbes  Watson  was  born  at  Mansfield, 
Notts,  on  February  7,  1840.  He  was 
educated  at  a  private  school  at  Clapham, 
and  was  articled  to  Dr.  Regworth,  of 
Birmingham.  He  then  entered  at  St. 
Thomas's  Hospital,  London,  and  after  a 
brilliant  career  as  a  student  there,1  he 
was  unanimously  elected,  though  only 

1  In  1859,  at  St.  Thomas's,  scholar  in  Physics  and 
Natural  History ;  in  1859,  at  Apothecary's  Hall,  Silver 
Medal  for  Botany ;  in  1860,  at  London  University,  the 
Gold  Medal  and  Scholarship  in  Materia  Medica  and 
Pharmaceutical  Chemistry,  and  the  Gold  Medal  in 
Botany ;  and  in  1861  he  was  admitted  Licentiate  of 
Apothecaries  and  M.R.C.S. 

xvii 


Biography 

twenty-one,  and  from  a  large  number  of 
older  candidates,  as  surgeon  to  the  Not- 
tingham Union,  a  post  which  he  held  till 
a  short  time  before  his  death.  He  died 
at  Nottingham,  August  28,  1869. 

He  was  a  born  artist  and  a  born  natu- 
ralist. As  an  artist  he  made  a  special 
study  of  the  old  masters  of  the  Italian 
and  Dutch  schools,  and  he  was  known 
from  his  early  youth  as  a  very  clever 
draughtsman ;  and  his  later  botanical 
drawings  were  so  exact,  and  yet  so 
artistic,  that  they  won  the  warm  appre- 
ciation of  Ruskin. 

As  a  naturalist  he  was  noted  for  his 
close  observation  and  patience  in  research, 
and  for  his  accuracy  in  the  minutest  par- 
ticulars, to  which  he  attached  a  value 
which  casual  observers  overlooked.  His 
love  of  flowers  and  botany  was  indeed 
hereditary,  for  on  his  mother's  side  he 
was  descended  from  Dr.  John  Fothergill, 
F.R.S.  (1712-1780),  who  was  in  his  day 
one  of  the  most  noted  English  botanists  ; 
he  had  a  garden  at  Upton,  West  Ham, 
which  had  a  European  reputation,  and 
was  a  correspondent  of  Linnaeus.  On 


XVlll 


Biography 

his  father's  side  he  was  descended  from 
James  Forbes,  F.R.S.  (1749-1819),  of 
Stanmore,  who  was  a  well-known  student 
in  Indian  botany.  This  hereditary  taste 
in  botany  was  strengthened  by  his  own 
deep  study,  and  by  his  occasional  holidays 
in  Wales,  Scotland,  Switzerland,  and  the 
Pyrenees. 

Among  his  friends  and  acquaintances 
he  was  known  as  a  man  of  unblemished 
character  and  pure  life ;  an  intense  lover 
of  truth,  wherever  he  could  find  it,  and 
a  hater  of  shams  and  falsehoods  of  every 
sort;  a  warm  friend,  especially  to  the 
poor,  to  whom  he  was  most  liberal,  even 
with  limited  means,  and  a  labourer  among 
them,  teaching  the  boys,  and  sparing  no 
labour  to  help  them  in  leading  good  lives  ; 
a  deeply  religious  man,  to  whom  his  re- 
ligion was  a  part  of  his  life,  and  a  very 
strong  Nonconformist. 

As  an  author  he  did  not  leave  as 
much  behind  him  as  his  friends,  who 
knew  his  high  literary  ability,  would 
have  wished.  He  wrote  some  magazine 
articles  and  many  religious  tracts,  and 
one  article  in  the  British  Quarterly  on 


XIX 


Biography 

Mrs.  Browning's  "Aurora  Leigh";  but 
the  only  book  published  with  his  name 
was  the  "  Flowers  and  Gardens,"  which 
was  published  nearly  three  years  after 
his  death. 

H.  N.  E. 


XX 


CONTENTS 


PORTRAIT 
PREFACE . 

EDITOR'S  PREFACE  . 
BIOGRAPHY 


Frontispiece 


vn 

xi 

xix 


PART  I 
FLOWERS 

I.    THE   SNOWDROP          .... 
II.    THE   YELLOW   CROCUS 
III.    THE   PURPLE   CROCUS 
IV.    THE   VIOLET      .  . 

V.    THE   COWSLIP 

VI.    THE   PRIMROSE  .... 

VII.    THE   GLOBE   FLOWER 
VIII.    THE   BLACKTHORN,    OR   SLOE      . 
IX.    THE   POET'S    NARCISSUS     . 

x.  THE  SNOWFLAKE  (Leucojum  astivum) 

XI.    THE   WHITE   LILY       .... 
XII.    THE   DAFFODIL  .... 

xxi 


3 
18 

27 
37 
45 
55 
67 

7i 

75 
78 

83 
85 


Contents 

PART  II 
GARDENS 

I.    FAULTS    IN   GARDENING     .  -97 

ii.  ON  GARDENERS'  FLOWERS        .        .        .138 

PART  III 
VEGETATION 

I.    SPRING   AND   SUMMER   VEGETATION  .  .       187 

II.    ON    THE   WITHERING   OF    PLANTS          .  .198 


PART  I 
FLOWERS 


The  Snowdrop 

IF  we  examine  our  garden  borders  a 
little  after  Christmas,  we  are  gene- 
rally pretty  sure  of  discovering  the 
first  signal  of  returning  spring  in 
the  green  points  of  the  Snowdrop  clus- 
ters just  peeping  through  the  ground. 
Looking  rather  more  closely,  we  find 
that  each  plant  has  put  forth  two  leaves, 
which  cohere  so  as  to  form  at  the  sum- 
mit a  short  conical  beak,  tipped  with 
a  blunt,  protective,  callous  point.  This 
green  beak  is  all  that  is  visible  at  this 
early  stage  of  growth,  and  is  admirably 
fitted  by  its  wedge-like  character  for  thrust- 
ing through  the  soil.  The  flower  lies 
at  present  deep  sunk  between  the  leaves, 
and  undeveloped,  waiting  till  they  have 
cleared  its  way  to  light  and  air.  Then 
the  leaves  separate  and  expand,  the  flower 
rapidly  outgrows  them,  and  before  they 
have  attained  full  size  it  has  withered. 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

But  what  I  wish  more  particularly  to 
notice  now  is  the  white  callous  tip  of  the 
beak  to  which  I  have  just  alluded  as  fitting 
it  for  piercing  the  ground.  This  is  not  a 
mere  temporary  provision.  It  persists  in 
the  full-grown  leaf,  and  is  common  to  many 
of  the  Endogenous  l  plants,  being  particu- 
larly well  seen  in  the  Snowdrop,  Daffodil, 
and  Hyacinth,  in  all  of  which  it  resembles 
a  little  waxen  point.  And  how  wonder- 
fully it  adds  to  the  beauty  of  these  plants ! 
Every  artist  knows  what  a  striking  effect 
can  be  given  by  a  few  well-placed  dots  to 
a  broken  line.  And  just  so  is  it  here. 
Their  sparkling,  dotty  appearance  makes 
the  Snowdrop  clusters  look  interesting 
and  animated  from  the  first  moment  that 
their  tips  pierce  the  ground.  And  in 
every  later  stage  the  leaves  of  both  Snow- 
drop and  Daffodil  would  seem  tame  and 
meaningless  without  it.  But  this  is  only  a 
very  small  part  of  the  matter.  The  dot 
has  a  much  higher  purpose  than  that  of 
merely  giving  pleasure  to  the  eye  by  con- 
trast, like  dewdrops  scattered  over  grass. 
It  is  most  essential  for  the  thorough  en- 
joyment of  beauty  that  we  should  get  at  it 

1  Endogenous  plants  are  those  whose  leaves  have 
parallel  veins  like  grasses,  as  distinguished  from  Exo- 
genous plants,  like  Foxglove,  £c.,  whose  leaves  are  net- 
veined. 

4 


The  Snowdrop 

as  rapidly  and  with  as  little  effort  as  pos- 
sible, for  some  of  the  most  delightful 
sensuous  impressions  are  very  transient, 
and  remain  but  for  an  instant  in  their  full 
intensity.  Look,  for  example,  at  a  bright 
scarlet  Ranunculus  in  the  sunlight.  You 
see  the  scarlet  for  a  second,  and  then  it 
changes  into  brown.  You  must  turn  your 
eyes  away  before  you  can  renew  the  im- 
pression. And  what  is  true  of  colour- 
beauty  is  to  some  extent  true  also  of 
every  other  kind.  This  does  not  at  all 
interfere  with  the  fact  that  the  longer  we 
look  the  more  we  shall  discover,  and  that 
some  of  the  deepest  impressions  come 
latest.  I  only  mean  that  no  impression 
can  last  unimpaired.  Every  moment  we 
may  be  gaining  something  fresh,  but  we 
are  also  losing  hold  of  something  which 
we  had  the  moment  before.  There  is  a 
good  illustration  of  this  in  the  difference 
between  childhood  and  maturity.  The 
man  in  most  respects  may  see  deeper  than 
the  child,  but  he  has  lost  the  freshness 
and  vividness  of  childhood's  first  percep- 
tions. The  eye  then  needs  to  get  at 
beauty  rapidly,  and  also  needs  something 
to  assist  it  in  holding  the  main  bearings  in 
view  as  it  passes  from  part  to  part,  or  in 
recovering  them  when  it  has  lost  them. 
5 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

Now  all  this  the  dot  helps  to  accomplish. 
It  emphasises  just  that  point  which  should 
catch  the  eye  at  once,  guiding  it  straight 
to  the  outlines  or  leading  lines,  and  res- 
cuing the  whole  plant  from  what  might 
otherwise  appear  but  a  confused  patch  of 
green.  This  plan  of  leading  the  eye  is 
continually  adopted  by  painters.  There 
is  a  good  example  of  it  in  Leonardo  da 
Vinci's  "  Last  Supper,"  where  the  radi- 
ating beams  of  the  roof  and  main  lines  of 
the  bodies  of  the  disciples  converge  to- 
wards the  head  of  Christ,  thus  carrying  us 
at  once  to  the  grand  point  of  the  picture. 
The  means  which  are  used  in  different 
kinds  of  leaves  to  make  the  outlines  more 
noticeable  are  often  well  worth  examining. 
Sometimes  it  is  by  thickening,  as  in  the 
case  we  have  already  mentioned,  some- 
times by  means  exactly  opposite.  Very 
frequently,  as  in  the  Lily  of  the  Valley,  a 
thin  line  of  cuticle  surrounds  the  leaf,  and 
gleams  in  the  light  by  its  transparency. 
In  the  common  purple  Iris  of  the  gardens, 
where  the  leaf  is  like  a  broad  sharp  sword- 
blade,  there  is  a  gradual  thinning  from 
the  centre  towards  the  edges,  as  well  as 
a  translucent  margin.  So  that,  look  at 
what  distance  you  will,  the  large  broad 
surfaces  are  easily  distinguishable  from 
6 


The  Snowdrop 

each  other  by  mere   differences   of  light 
and  shade. 

We  now  pass  on  to  the  flower  of  the 
Snowdrop.  This,  as  every  one  knows, 
droops  from  the  end  of  a  slender  stalk, 
which  arises  at  the  top  of  the  stem  from 
a  sheath-like  bract  or  spathe.  Now  look 
at  that  slender  stalk,  and  notice  parti- 
cularly the  character  of  the  bend  it  makes. 
This  is  not,  as  it  is  sometimes  represented 
in  drawings,  a  gradual,  arching  curve. 
The  stalk  would  then  look  weak,  as  if 
bent  by  the  weight  of  the  flower,  and 
such  a  condition  can  never  naturally  be 
found,  except  in  a  sickly  Snowdrop,  or 
else  in  double  blossoms,  where  it  is  ex- 
tremely common.  And  notice,  if  you  have 
met  with  any  such  specimen,  how  com- 
pletely all  its  beauty  is  destroyed.  In  a 
healthy  Snowdrop  this  stalk  is  for  the 
most  part  nearly  straight,  bending  slightly, 
and  only  slightly,  to  the  weight  of  the 
flower.1  Slender  though  it  be,  it  seems 
to  assert  its  own  freedom  and  perfect 
ability  to  stand  as  upright  as  it  pleases. 
But  just  at  the  end  it  makes  a  sudden 

1  If  the  flower  be  young,  there  will  be  hardly  any  per- 
ceptible bend  in  the  slender  flower-stalk  ;  it  will  bend 
just  slightly  in  an  older  specimen.  [In  the  older  speci- 
men the  weight  is  increased  by  the  swelling  seed-vessel. 
— H.  N.  E.] 

7 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

hook  downwards,  and  this  little  hook  per- 
mits the  drooping.  And  how  exquisite 
is  the  result !  We  have  said  that  the 
little  flower-stalk  is  nearly  straight.  But 
it  must  be  saved  from  an  appearance  of 
over-straightness,  and  this  is  effected  by 
the  investing  sheath-like  bract,  which 
curves  over  it  like  a  pruning-hook.  Cut 
away  the  bract,  and  notice  how  you  spoil 
the  arch.  Now  take  up  the  blossom,  and 
hold  it  upside  downwards,  with  the  cup 
erect,  the  contrary  position  to  that  in 
which  it  was  meant  to  be  seen.  How 
completely  its  loveliness  has  vanished ! 
What  an  insipid  flower  it  would  be  if  that 
were  its  natural  posture,  the  petals  want- 
ing in  breadth,  the  whole  aspect  destitute 
of  character !  Everything  is  right  if  seen 
just  as  was  originally  intended,  and  wrong 
otherwise. 

But  here  a  difficulty  presents  itself.  I 
notice  that  the  three  inner  petals  are  care- 
fully ribbed  on  their  internal  surface  with 
bright  green  parallel  veins,  evidently  for 
the  purpose  of  ornament,  and  that  Nature 
has  furthermore  taken  the  trouble  to  colour 
the  stamens  orange,  so  as  to  complete  the 
harmony.  Now,  in  the  ordinary  position 
of  the  flower,  the  only  position  in  which 
it  can  appear  beautiful  as  a  whole,  these 
8 


The  Snowdrop 

green  lines  and  stamens  are  scarcely  to 
be  seen.  Where  was  the  necessity  for 
troubling  about  them  if  the  flower  was 
never  intended  to  be  looked  at  upside 
downwards  ?  The  answer,  I  think,  must 
be  this.  We  make  the  acquaintance  of 
any  individual  existence  under  an  immense 
number  of  different  aspects,  and  it  is  the 
sum  of  all  these  aspects  which  constitutes 
that  existence  to  us.  A  Snowdrop,  for 
instance,  is  not  to  me  merely  such  a  figure 
as  a  painter  might  give  me  by  copying 
the  flower  when  placed  so  that  its  loveli- 
ness shall  be  best  apparent,  but  a  curious 
mental  combination  or  selection  from  the 
figures  which  the  flower  may  present  when 
placed  in  every  possible  position,  and  in 
every  aspect  which  it  has  worn  from  birth 
to  grave,  and  coloured  by  all  the  associa- 
tions which  have  chanced  to  cling  around 
it.  ,  To  the  bodily  eye  which  beholds  it 
for  the  first  time,  it  might  be  of  no  conse- 
quence what  lay  within  the  petals,  though 
even  then  the  imagination  would  be  whis- 
pering some  solution  of  the  secret ;  but 
to  the  eye  of  mind,  when  the  flower  has 
been  often  seen,  that  hidden  green  and 
yellow  which  is  necessary  to  complete 
the  harmony  becomes  distinctly  visible — 
visible,  that  is,  in  that  strange,  indefinite 
9 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

way  in  which  all  things,  however  appa- 
rently incompatible,  seem  present  and 
blended  together  when  the  imaginative 
faculty  is  at  work.  The  common  Star  of 
Bethlehem  (Ornithogalum  wnbellatum)  is 
a  good  illustration  of  the  working  of  this 
principle.  When  I  look  at  the  beautiful 
silver  white  of  the  inner  surface  of  the 
petals,  my  mind  is  always  dwelling  upon 
and  rejoicing  in  the  fact  that  their  outer 
side  is  green,  though  of  that  green  outside 
I  cannot  see  a  hair's-breadth.  Again,  we 
find  the  same  principle  at  work  in  the 
feeling  which  compelled  the  old  sculptors 
to  finish  the  hidden  side  of  the  statue. 
They  said,  "  For  the  gods  are  every- 
where."1 They  meant  that  when  they 
looked  upon  their  labours  the  imagination 
would  necessarily  carry  away  their  thoughts 
to  that  hidden  side,  and  that,  if  not  finished 
like  the  rest,  it  would  have  pained  them 
by  its  incompleteness.  Of  course,  when 
Snowdrops  are  placed  together  in  a  bunch, 
we  see  in  some  the  full  beauty  of  the 
interior,  whilst  the  defects  of  that  position 
are  covered  by  the  presence  of  the  sur- 
rounding flowers. 

1  [Tow  6fS>v  eveKa  was  the  reason,  and  it  was  the  rule 
with  the  workmen  of  the  Middle  Ages  :  the  inner  hidden 
side  of  arches,  as  of  sedilia,  was  as  carefully  carved  as  the 
conspicuous  outside. — H.  N.  E.] 
10 


The  Snowdrop 

We  next  come  to  the  name,  and 
in  the  whole  vocabulary  of  plants  it 
will  be  difficult  to  find  another  which 
goes  so  straight  to  its  mark,  and  renders 
so  perfectly  the  distinctive  character 
and  expression.  Even  the  generic  name 
of  Linnaeus,  though  designed  like  all 
such  for  the  purposes  rather  of  science 
than  of  poetry,  is  beautiful  both  in  mean- 
ing and  in  form.  Galanthus  —  that  is 
to  say,  "  Milk  Flower,"  from  Td\a  avOo? 
— perhaps  comes  nearer  to  the  actual 
colour  than  even  our  native  Saxon,  and 
expresses  the  softness  and  purity  of  the 
blossom,  as  well  as  the  glaucous  milky 
aspect  of  leaf  and  stem.  We  have  all  the 
delicious  clearness  and  purity  of  sound  so 
usual  in  Greek  words ;  and  the  termina- 
tion "anthus,"  or  "lanthus,"  seems  pecu- 
liarly well  fitted  to  render  the  character 
of  many  Endogens  with  a  sharp,  tapering, 
lance-life  form  of  leaf.1  This  is  not  from 
any  accidental  association  with  the  word 
"  lance,"  but  rather  from  both  these  words 
being  to  a  certain  extent  alike  in  ex- 
pression.2 

1  More  especially  adapted,  if  my  feeling  be  correct,  to 
plants  with  lance-shaped  leaves  and  a  leafy  stem,  like 
some  of  the  garden  Fritillarias. 

2  [A  fanciful  derivation,  for  which  there  is  no  authority. 
There  is  no  such  word  as  "lanthus." — H.  N.  E.] 

ii 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

But  what  is  this  scientific  name  when 
compared  with  the  "  Snowdrop "  of  our 
native  tongue?  How  insignificant  is  that 
nearer  rendering  of  sensuous  character  and 
colour,  deeply  capable  as  these  are  of  ex- 
pressing soul — of  conveying  the  spiritual 
meaning  and  essence,  when  placed  beside 
that  which  sets  forth  not  form  and  aspect 
merely,  but  the  relation  of  these  to  what 
we  know  of  the  plant,  to  the  history  of 
its  life  and  struggle,  and  all  that  most 
endears  it  to  our  affections !  Such  a  name 
as  Galanthus  only  gives  what  we  might 
easily  discern  if  the  flower  were  a  perfect 
stranger,  and  even  here  it  would  be  far 
inferior  to  Snowdrop.  But  this  is  a  very 
small  part  of  what  we  ought  to  see  in  the 
flower.  It  is  not  the  clustering  associa- 
tions merely — a  word  which  we  hate,  on 
their  own  principles,  from  its  connection 
with  the  school  of  Alison  and  Jeffrey — 
but  the  exquisite  manner  in  which  it 
symbolises  the  changes  of  the  season 
which  gives  it  birth.  This  will  best  be 
shown  by  closely  studying  the  expres- 
sion. Look  at  the  flower  as  it  first  ap- 
pears at  the  end  of  January,  when  winter 
is  closed,  or  at  least  its  main  strength 
broken.  The  snow  is  thawing,  the  sky 
overcast,  not  a  single  cheering  sunbeam  ; 

12 


The  Snowdrop 

yet  one  Snowdrop  has  ventured  forth, 
and  there  it  stands,  alone  in  its  purity, 
with  drooping  head,  and  petals  not  un- 
folded, modest,  patient,  unobtrusive,  yet 
calm  and  serene,  as  if  assured  of  victory 
over  storm  and  cloud.  The  branches  of 
the  trees  are  naked  and  dripping,  the 
stoutest  plants  have  hid  their  blossoms ; 
yet  this  fair  one,  apparently  as  tender  as 
a  maiden,  through  some  unseen  strength 
can  brave  the  rigour  of  the  time.  We 
hail  it  as  the  herald  of  deliverance,  the 
foremost  of  our  long-lost  friends.  The 
Master  of  the  great  earth-ark  has  sent 
out  His  dove  to  stay  with  us,  and  it  tells 
us  that  the  rest  will  quickly  follow.  In 
this  solitary  coming  forth,  which  is  far 
more  beautiful  when  we  chance  to  see  it 
thus  amidst  the  melting  snow,  rather 
than  on  the  dark  bare  earth,  the  kind 
little  flower,  however  it  may  gladden  us, 
seems  itself  to  wear  an  aspect  almost  of 
sorrow.  Yet  wait  another  day  or  two 
till  the  clouds  have  broken,  and  its 
brave  hope  is  accomplished,  and  the 
solitary  one  has  become  a  troop,  and  all 
down  the  garden  amongst  the  shrubs  the 
little  white  bunches  are  dancing  gaily 
in  the  breeze.  Few  flowers  undergo 
such  striking  change  of  aspect,  so  mourn- 
13 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

ful  in  its  early  drooping,  so  gladsome 
when  full-blown  and  dancing  in  the  sun- 
shine.1 

But  what  is  its  relation  to  the  snow  ?  A 
relation  such  as  no  other  flower  of  that 
season  bears  ;  for,  like  one  of  those  emble- 
matic pageants  in  which  our  ancestors 
delighted,  it  presents  in  silent  masque  the 
change  that  is  passing,  the  green  inhabi- 
tant issuing  from  its  slumber  in  the  earth 
and  holding  forth  a  semblance  of  snow 
just  melting  into  dew.  The  Snowdrop  is 
a  very  star  of  hope  in  a  season  of  wreck 
and  dismay,  the  one  bright  link  between 
the  perishing  good  of  the  past  and  the 
better  which  has  not  yet  begun  to  follow. 
All  around  is  troubled  ;  the  beauty  of  the 
snow  has  vanished,  whilst  that  of  the 
spring  has  not  yet  arrived  ;  and  here  is  a 
promise  that  the  lower  form  of  purity  shall 
be  replaced  by  a  higher  and  more  perfect, 
the  purity  of  a  nobler  form  of  life — better, 
as  the  flower  is  better  than  the  snow- 
crystal,  the  man  than  the  child,  the  sinner 
redeemed  than  the  angels,  if  such  there 

1  I  do  not  suppose  that  a  Snowdrop  like  that  which  I 
have  described  will  have  actually  pushed  up  through  the 
snow.  It  will  generally  be  found  in  some  sheltered  spot, 
and  most  probably  is  but  some  bud  which  has  been  im- 
perfectly covered. 


The  Snowdrop 

are,  who  have  never  needed  repentance. 
And  this  less  perfect  old  must  perish,  that 
from  its  death  may  arise  the  more  perfect 
new. 

And  though  every  form  of  life,  whether 
high  or  low,  has  its  own  peculiar  beauty, 
yet  little  here  is  lost  in  comparison  with 
what  we  gain.  Snow  and  ice  are  cold, 
deathlike,  dreary.  Here  is  a  flower  which 
preserves  one  of  the  choicest  beauties 
of  the  snow,  and  shows  what  we  might 
otherwise  have  deemed  impossible  — 
that  this  beauty  can  be  made  compatible 
with  life  of  a  more  active  kind.  This 
is  but  one  of  the  lower  steps  of  the 
ladder  which  must  end  in  heaven,  point- 
ing us  to  a  union  of  happinesses  which 
cannot  coexist  on  earth,  where  activity  de- 
stroys contemplation,  the  fruit  the  flower, 
and  the  love  of  near  relationship  forbids 
the  deepest  kind.  Are  these  thoughts 
fanciful  or  arbitrary?  Is  it  merely  by 
accident  that  this  flower  awakens  them, 
by  some  chance  interweaving  of  its  form 
with  our  feelings  at  the  time  of  its  birth, 
or  is  it  not  rather  plain  that  every  por- 
tion of  its  fabric  was  exactly  framed 
with  a  view  to  awaken  and  express  such 
feelings  ?  If  arbitrary,  the  thought  would 
be  comparatively  worthless ;  its  value 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

chiefly  consists  in  its  being  a  true  reading 
of  nature. 

Let  us  look,  for  instance,  at  just  one  of 
these  unimportant  accidents  of  structure, 
as  some  utilitarians  would  consider  them, 
though  perhaps  as  necessary  to  the  well- 
being  of  the  plant  as  they  unquestionably 
are  to  its  loveliness.  See  how  the  whole 
make  of  the  flower  contributes  to  its  drop- 
like  character,1  the  most  essential  feature 
in  the  expression.  Now,  if  one  simple 
change  were  made,  this  character  would  be 
wholly  lost.  There  are  plenty  of  drooping 
flowers  amongst  the  Liliaceae.  Suppose 
that  the  Snowdrop  had  been  a  Liliaceous 
instead  of  an  Amaryllidaceous  plant.  The 
two  orders  so  nearly  resemble  each  other 
that  no  visible  change  would  be  needed 
except  this  one — that  the  green  drop-like 
ovary  would  be  contained  within  the 
corolla,  instead  of  being  outside  it.  And 
thus  the  form  of  the  double  drop  would  be 
lost,  for  the  corolla  would  spring  directly 
from  the  flower-stalk.  We  may  also  notice, 
when  the  flower  is  closed  and  the  fitness 
of  its  name  most  manifestly  seen,  how  the 
white  corolla,  so  narrow  where  it  leaves 

1  [The  drop  in  Snowdrop  is  not  a  drop  of  water  (gutta), 
but  is  the  old  name  for  a  pendent  jewel,  especially  an  ear- 
ring—H.  N.  E.] 

16 


The  Snowdrop 

the  ovary,  lets  its  fulness  run  down  into 
the  tip,  so  as  to  give  the  form  of  a  dew- 
drop  just  parting  from  the  stalk  which 
bears  it.1 

1  Do  not  take  too  young  a  flower  in  examining  this 
last  point. 


II 

The  Yellow   Crocus  1 


the  Snowdrop  enters 
so  Q^1^-  a  f°°tstep  that 
it  might  almost  pass  unob- 
served amidst  the  remnants 
of  the  melting  snow,  the  Crocus  bursts 
upon  us  in  a  blaze  of  colour  like  the  sun- 
rise of  the  flowers.  TotWcwmAos-  'Heo?,  the 
"  rosy-fingered  dawn  "  of  spring,  are  the 
words  which  rise  to  our  lips  instinctively 
as  we  look  upon  it.  Most  gladsome  of 
the  early  flowers  !  None  gives  more  glow- 
ing welcome  to  the  season,  or  strikes  on 
our  first  glance  with  a  ray  of  keener  plea- 
sure when,  with  some  bright  morning's 
warmth,  the  solitary  golden  fingers  have 
kindled  into  knots  of  thick-clustered  yellow 
bloom  on  the  borders  of  the  cottage 
garden.  At  a  distance  the  eye  is  caught 

1  Examine  good  out-of-door  specimens,  and  avoid  as 
much  as  possible  the  later  blossoms  of  the  season,  which 
are  often  very  faulty. 

18 


The  Yellow  Crocus 

by  that  glowing  patch,  its  warm  heart 
open  to  the  sun,  and  dear  to  the  honey- 
gathering  bees  which  hum  around  the 
chalices. 

This  is  one  of  the  many  plants  which 
are  spoilt  by  too  much  meddling.  If  the 
gardener  too  frequently  separates  the  off- 
sets, the  individual  blooms  may  possibly 
be  finer,  but  the  lover  of  flowers  will  miss 
the  most  striking  charms  of  the  humbler 
and  more  neglected  plant.  The  reason  is 
this  :  the  bloom,  when  first  opening,  is  of 
a  deeper  orange  than  afterwards,  and  this 
depth  of  hue  is  seemingly  increased  when 
the  blossoms  are  small  from  crowded 
growth.  In  these  little  clusters,  there- 
fore, where  the  flowers  are  of  various 
sizes,  the  colour  gains  in  variety  and 
depth,  as  well  as  in  extent  of  surface, 
and  vividness  of  colour  is  the  most  im- 
portant point  in  the  expression  of  the 
Yellow  Crocus. 

I  have  called  the  Crocus  po$o$dKrv\o$ 
'Ho*,  and  the  expression  has  an  additional 
meaning  if  we  look  upon  the  flower  some 
morning  of  gleaming  doubtful  sunshine, 
when  it  is  uncertain  whether  to  expand  or 
no.  Perhaps  the  folded  petal  reveals  a 
glimpse  of  the  deeper  orange  within,  and 
at  times  you  see  playing  over  the  outer 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

surface,  and  melting  into  that  deeper 
flame,  a  faint  rosy  tint,  soft  and  delicate 
as  that  which  the  sunset  casts  when  it 
fades  upon  the  summits  of  the  Alps. 
Then  gather  a  flower,  and  look  into  it 
when  expanded  in  more  steady  sunlight. 
You  will  see  that  what  at  first  seem  the 
white  reflections  are  in  every  part  of  this 
exquisite  rose-colour,  or  violet,  which  looks 
beautiful  under  the  microscope  in  a  strip 
of  the  petal  skin.  It  was  this  tint  which, 
playing  over  the  outside  of  the  flower,  and 
perhaps  blending  with  a  glimpse  of  orange 
from  within,  caused  the  appearance  we 
have  noticed.  And  now  let  us  study  the 
flower  a  little  more  closely.  Take  one 
fully  expanded,  and  hold  it  so  that  the 
light  may  enter  the  cup  ;  you  see  there 
are  six  petals,1  three  outer  and  three  inner. 
Though  at  first  sight  apparently  alike  in 
colour,  close  attention  will  show  that  the 
inner  segments  are  of  deeper  hue  and 
more  distinctly  orange  than  the  outer. 
This  does  not  matter  much  to  us  just 
now,  except  as  tending  to  give  variety 
and  gradation.  But  we  must  carefully 
observe  the  colour  itself.  Like  most 
things  that  are  very  beautiful,  it  varies 

1  [Not  true  petals,  but  a  perianth  of  six  divisions.— 
H.  N.  E.] 

20 


The  Yellow  Crocus 

greatly  in  different  aspects  :  the  petals  to 
a  careless  eye,  and  especially  in  a  dull 
light,  may  seem  but  a  surface  of  glossy 
orange.  Yet  look  carefully,  and  they  are 
lighted  with  rosy  reflections,  pencilled  with 
delicate  streaks  and  nerves  of  shade,  and, 
above  all,  bestrewed  with  little  gleaming 
points,  a  host  of  microscopic  stars  which 
cast  a  fiery  sheen  like  that  of  the  forked 
feathers  of  the  Bar-tailed  Humming-bird, 
as  if  the  surface  were  engrained  with  dust 
of  amber  or  of  gold.  And  with  all  this 
there  is  united  what  seems  almost  a  trans- 
parency, like  that  of  topaz  or  some  precious 
gem,  giving  us  an  idea  of  that  fine  gold 
"  like  transparent  glass,"  which  we  never 
understand  till  we  see  it  in  the  clouds  at 
sunset. 

But  there  is  perhaps  even  yet  a  deeper 
loveliness  in  the  flower.  What  is  that  in 
the  lower  portion  of  the  chalice  which 
makes  it  seem  not  so  much  as  if  inlaid 
with  colour  like  the  rest,  but  rather  as 
if  dim  golden  flame  lay  burning  there,  a 
liquid  atmosphere  of  light.  The  wall, 
when  we  look  closely,  is  paler  and  more 
transparent  in  seeming,  or  rather  its  sub- 
stantial colour  has  given  place  to  a  pale 
yellow  surface  like  shaded  pearl,  mirror- 
like  and  lustrous,  changing  whenever  we 

21 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

move  it,  here  bright  when  it  seems  to 
catch  the  golden  reflections  from  above, 
here  darkening  as  we  turn  it  into  the 
shade.  We  might  almost  compare  it  to 
the  darker  yet  luminous  portion  at  the 
base  of  an  ordinary  gas-flame.  To  make 
out  the  cause  of  this  let  us  break  off  a 
petal  and  examine  it.  We  find  the  pearly 
surface  still  there,  and  unaltered  except 
in  its  brilliancy  being  subdued.  The 
colour  is,  therefore,  evidently  due  in  part 
to  reflected  light,  as  it  seemed  to  be ;  and 
this  may  easily  be  proved  by  further  ex- 
periment. Let  a  narrow  strip  of  black 
paper  be  inserted  into  the  corolla,  so  as 
to  cut  off  the  light  reflected  from  the  sur- 
rounding walls,  but  not  that  which  comes 
directly  from  the  sun.  The  greater  part 
of  the  brilliancy  is  now  seen  to  be  lost. 
Look  again  at  the  bottom  of  the  corolla, 
where  the  stamens  arise  from  it.  There 
is  a  little  ring  of  light  around  them  which 
no  change  of  position  can  affect.  But  if 
stamens  and  pistil  be  cut  away,  this  light 
will  disappear  at  once,  showing  that  it  is 
but  a  reflection,  and  very  valuable,  be- 
cause illuminating  the  point  which  light 
can  least  easily  reach. 

But  we  have  said  that  the  change  in 
the  severed   petals  was  not  in  kind,  but 

22 


The  Yellow  Crocus 

in  degree.  How  are  we  to  account  for 
the  character  which  it  still  retains?  Be- 
ginning at  the  bottom  of  the  petal,  let  us 
strip  off  the  skin,  as  we  can  easily  do, 
from  base  to  point  of  the  inner  face.  We 
have  now  made  the  petal  colourless — 
colourless,  that  is,  so  far  as  there  is  any- 
thing valuable  in  colour.  Nothing  is  left 
but  a  pale,  tawny,  fleshy  lamina,  streaked 
with  part  parallel,  part  radiating  veins. 
The  space  at  the  base  of  the  petal  still 
remains,  being  more  transparent  than  the 
rest  when  we  look  through  it,  and  still 
changeful  in  different  positions,  though 
only  from  light  to  shade,  after  the  pearly 
fashion  of  ordinary  cellular  tissue.  Its 
greater  clearness  is  due  partly  to  an  in- 
creased transparency  of  its  cellular  tissues, 
and  partly  to  its  main  thickness  being 
occupied  by  the  vessels  entering  the 
petal.  Vessels  are  always  very  trans- 
parent ;  this  quality  enables  us  to  trace 
them  with  the  naked  eye  wherever  they 
go,  and  of  course  they  give  transparency 
wherever  they  happen  to  be  numerous. 
The  cellular  tissue  is,  on  the  contrary, 
opaque  and  lustreless  in  the  upper  part 
of  the  lamina,  the  glistening  character 
there  becoming  wholly  lost :  this  little 
dissection  will  enable  us  to  understand 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

the  mirror-like  aspect.  Lastly,  as  to 
the  difference  of  colour,  you  will  see 
that  the  skin  you  have  stripped  off  bears 
the  colour  of  the  petal  with  it.  It  is 
transparent — glances  in  the  sun  like  gold- 
leaf:  and  you  may  observe  that  the 
colouring  matter  is  much  less  in  quantity 
in  the  part  which  corresponds  with  the 
pearly  surface.  In  the  Purple  Crocus 
the  colour  in  this  part  of  the  skin  is 
absolutely  wanting,  and  whatever  faint 
colour  may  seem  present  there,  shines 
through  from  the  outer  surface.  We 
need  not  stay  longer  to  notice  the  eleva- 
tions and  depressions  of  the  mirror-like 
portion,  or  the  extreme  thinness  and  in- 
curving of  the  margin  of  the  petal  here, 
which  all  tend  in  various  ways  to  in- 
crease the  effect. 

But  has  it  been  worth  our  while  to 
give  this  minute  attention  to  the  colour 
of  a  flower?  Unquestionably  yes,  for  it 
is  only  by  this  close,  poring  attention 
that  we  shall  ever  understand  its  beauty. 
Look  at  it  till  you  have  drunk  in  all 
its  loveliness,  or  learned  the  impossi- 
bility of  doing  so  ;  turn  it  into  different 
positions,  view  it  by  transmitted  light, — 
that  is,  with  the  sun-rays  coming  through 
it, — and  then  again  by  reflected  light,  or 
24 


The  Yellow  Crocus 

with  the  rays  falling  straight  upon  it. 
Do  this  with  a  number  of  specimens  of 
different  ages,  on  dull  days  and  on  fine 
ones,  and  you  will  not  only  discover 
new  beauties,  but  will  learn  the  great 
difficulty  of  rightly  describing  flower- 
colour.  Even  Mr.  Ruskin  has  fallen 
into  error  here.  He  attacks  O.  W. 
Holmes  for  the  couplet — 

"The  spendthrift  Crocus,   thrusting  through  the 

mould, 
Naked  and  shivering,  with  his  cup  of  gold." 

The  lines  are  evidently  faulty  enough. 
The  Crocus  "  naked  and  shivering"! 
We  might  as  well  say  that  the  flames 
are  shivering  on  the  wintry  hearth,  for 
warmth  is  the  very  essence  of  the  flower. 
But  to  assert  that  the  Crocus  is  not 
golden,  but  saffron,  is  hypercritical  ;  and, 
moreover,  scarcely  true.  It  is  saffron  in 
a  dull  light,  and  in  a  light  still  duller  it 
may  be  almost  brown.  But  what  is  it 
when  placed  in  the  unclouded  sunshine, 
the  only  time  when  the  flower  is  fairly 
describable  as  a  cup  ?  What  can  we  say 
positively  about  the  colour  then  ?  The 
petals  are  orange  here  and  yellow  there, 
and  everywhere  display  that  shifting 
glance  which  we  have  already  described 
25 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

as  only  comparable  to  brightest  gold, 
together  with  a  restless  glow  which,  as 
the  sunbeams  stir  it,  seems  absolutely 
to  leave  the  walls,  and  roll  like  a  fiery 
atmosphere  within.  Is  not  gold  the 
comparison  best  suited  to  embrace  all 
this,  and  most  poetical,  because  most 
strictly  true? 

Here,  then,  is  the  use  of  our  minute 
attention.  I  never  noticed  the  golden 
gleaming  of  the  Crocus  until  I  began  to 
look  minutely.  I  can  see  it  easily  at 
a  distance  now,  as  an  element  of  the 
ordinary  colour. 


26 


Ill 

The  Purple  Crocus^ 

THE    Yellow    Crocus   is   a   perfect 
flower,    leaving   nothing   that   we 
could  wish  to  add  to  or  to  alter, 
and  at  first  sight  there  seems  to 
be  something   less  satisfactory   when  we 
turn  from  it  to  look  at  the  Purple  Crocus. 
In  the  first  place,  the  latter  plant  is  far 
less  elegant  in   shape.     We  must  follow 
this    carefully   and    in    detail.      We    shall 
find   that   the   back  of  a  Yellow  Crocus 
petal    is    striped    with    a    series    of   dark 
lines,    of  which   the  central   and  longest 
runs  on  to  the  end    of  the  petal,   while 
the  shorter  radiate  from  it  on  each  side 

1  In  these  remarks  I  refer  more  particularly  to  the 
wild  flower,  Crocus  vernus.  In  garden  specimens  it 
must  be  remembered  that  the  shape  will  be  probably 
more  or  less  distorted,  and  some  injury  done  to  the 
general  harmony  of  effect,  though  the  tints  may  be 
greatly  enriched.  The  less  highly  cultivated  the  plant, 
the  better  will  it  answer  to  my  description.  The  flower 
should  be  wide  open  when  examined. 
27 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

at  the  base.  These  lines  must  not  be 
mistaken  for  veins.  With  these  they 
have  no  connection  whatever,  not  even 
corresponding  with  them  in  position,  and 
being  only  skin  deep,  as  may  readily  be 
seen  by  peeling  the  back  of  the  petal. 
They  are,  to  all  appearance,  placed  there 
solely  for  the  purpose  of  ornament.  It 
is  best  to  examine  them  on  one  of  the 
outer  petals,  as  on  the  inner  they  are 
but  very  faintly  developed.  The  value 
of  these  lines  as  affording  variety  of 
colour  is  at  once  apparent,  but  their 
value  is  still  greater  with  reference  to 
the  shape  of  the  flower.  The  Crocus- 
cup  possesses  a  double-curve  ;  the  lower 
part  shorter  and  less  noticeable,  a  slight 
undulating  fulness  at  the  very  bottom 
of  the  cup ;  the  upper  long,  and  bend- 
ing the  tip  of  the  petal  inwards,  as 
gracefully  as  if  it  were  the  crest  of  a 
wave.  Now  observe  the  effect  of  these 
lines  upon  that  lower  curve.  We  shall 
not  attempt  to  describe  their  arrange- 
ment. It  would  be  vain  to  do  so  with- 
out a  diagram,  and  they  can  be  readily 
understood  by  actual  inspection  of  the 
flower,  without  which  both  description 
and  diagram  would  be  useless.  It  is 
sufficient  to  say  that  they  are  to  some 
28 


The  Purple  Crocus 

extent  parallel,  or  nearly  so,  and  to 
some  extent  divergent.  Now,  viewing 
the  petal  in  profile,  but  so  that  the 
dark  midline  may  be  distinctly  seen,  we 
shall  find  that  this  line  marks  and  em- 
phasises the  whole  length  of  the  double 
curve  from  top  to  bottom  of  the  corolla. 
Below,  the  others  join  it,  and,  partly 
by  the  repetition  of  line  and  partly  by 
their  darkness,  lend  additional  emphasis 
and  power  to  the  lower  curve.  But  we 
have  already  said  that  these  lines  are 
to  some  extent  divergent,  radiating  in  a 
direction  away  from  the  base  of  the 
petal.  Partly  from  this  circumstance, 
and  partly  from  the  shape  of  the  figure 
they  form,  they  guide  the  eye  like  a 
dart  to  the  central  line  where  it  runs 
down  into  the  stalk.  And  thus  we  are 
furnished  with  a  system  of  leading  lines, 
enabling  us,  on  looking  at  the  flower, 
to  see  at  a  glance  the  curve  of  every 
petal  and  its  relation  to  the  others,  and, 
besides,  giving  unity  to  the  whole  by 
guiding  the  eye  to  the  meeting  -  point 
in  the  stalk.  The  effect  of  lines  at 
once  parallel  and  divergent  is  gained  by 
this  most  beautiful  arrangement. 

These  lines  act  in  just  the  same  way 
if  we  look  at  the  petal    from   the  back. 
29 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

They  give  prominence  to  the  lower 
swelling  by  spreading  over  it  like  the 
open  fingers  of  a  hand,  and  serve  wher- 
ever they  go  to  emphasise  the  undula- 
tions of  the  surface  which  they  have  to 
traverse. 

Now  all  this  in  the  Purple  Crocus  is 
far  less  exquisite.  The  upper  curve  is 
less  beautifully  rounded  at  the  tip,  and  the 
lower  less  distinctly  marked,  so  that  the 
corolla  is  almost  funnel-shaped  in  the 
neck.  As  the  lower  curve  is  unimportant, 
dark  parallel  stripes,  like  those  of  the 
Yellow  Crocus,  are,  of  course,  not  needed 
to  enforce  it.  These  stripes  have  accord- 
ingly vanished,  and  are  replaced  by  mere 
feather-shaped  patches  of  deeper  violet, 
which  are  all  that  is  needed  to  insist 
upon  the  shape  of  the  flower,  and  to  guide 
the  eye  downwards  into  the  tube.  Stripes 
would  here  be  inconvenient  as  well  as  un- 
necessary, because  the  inner  petals  are 
striped,  and  a  somewhat  monotonous  tone 
in  the  outer  petals  is  needed  for  variety, 
as  well  as  to  convey  that  general  ex- 
pression of  the  flower  of  which  we  shall 
presently  speak.  When  we  come  to  exa- 
mine the  full  form  of  the  petal  at  the  back, 
its  inferiority  in  shape  becomes  still  more 
manifest.  Not  only  have  we  lost  that 
3° 


The  Purple  Crocus 

undulating  character  of  the  surface,  which 
was  emphasised  so  beautifully  by  the 
stripes  in  the  Yellow  Crocus,  but  all 
special  delicacy  of  petal  outline  is  entirely 
wanting. 

Again,  we  have  said  that  colour  is  the 
grand  source  of  expression  in  the  Crocus, 
and  unfortunately  in  this  respect  the 
Purple  Crocus  too  often  appears  at  a 
disadvantage.  In  a  garden,  especially  if 
it  be  thinly  planted,  the  purplish-brown 
of  the  naked  earth  strikes  a  discord  with 
its  hues.  Then  the  colour  is  apt  to  be 
ill-formed,  uncertain,  and  disappointing  on 
a  close  inspection.  Its  tints  are  often 
improved  under  the  gardener's  hands. 
We  sometimes  see  lovely  specimens  in 
the  markets,  and  the  colour  comes  out 
most  brilliantly  when  the  flower  is  as- 
sociated with  its  yellow  and  white  re- 
lations on  a  garden  border.1  Do  we, 
then,  mean  to  assert  a  real  inferiority  in 
this  flower?  Not  at  all,  except  in  the 
particulars  we  have  mentioned.  We  have 
made  this  comparison  with  a  double  object 

1  The  commonest  of  the  White  Garden  Crocuses  is 
only  a  pale  variety  of  C.  vernus.  [The  White  Garden 
Crocuses  are  varieties  of  C.  ruernus^  but  not  of  the 
Nottingham  form  of  C.  -vermis  of  which  he  is  speaking. 
They  are  chiefly  derived  from  the  large  Southern  variety, 
C.  obo-vatus—R.  N.  E.] 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

— partly  to  render  the  excellences  of  the 
Yellow  Crocus  shape  more  striking  by 
the  contrast,  and  partly  to  illustrate  the 
general  principle  that  what  in  one  work 
of  Nature  seems  less  perfect  as  compared 
with  another,  is  generally  only  made  so 
as  the  means  of  developing  some  peculiar 
kind  of  utility  or  beauty,  with  which 
higher  excellence  would  be  incompatible. 
We  by  no  means  think  that  what  is  best 
in  the  Purple  Crocus  must  come  from  the 
gardener,  or  that  it  is  necessarily  seen  at 
best  advantage  when  contrasted  with  its 
White  and  Yellow  congeners.  We  admit 
at  once  that  it  gains  here  in  outward 
splendour.  But  it  frequently  happens 
that  what  is  dearest  and  deepest  in  any 
flower  is  best  seen  when  that  flower  is 
observed  alone.  Each  generally  contains 
in  itself  sufficient  elements  of  contrast, 
and  needs  no  others  to  assist  them.  And 
so  we  shall  find  it  here.  In  the  first 
place,  the  Purple  Crocus  differs  widely 
from  the  Yellow  in  expression.  The 
latter  is  seen  to  best  advantage  at  noon- 
day, in  the  clear  warm  sunshine.  It  is 
bright,  animated,  cheering — our  heart 
" leaps  up"  as  we  behold  it.  This  active 
character  seems  to  demand  a  greater 
vivacity  in  the  curves,  a  vivacity  which 
32 


The  Purple  Crocus 

would  be  merely  trivial  in  the  Purple 
Crocus.  You  would  no  more  wish  to 
see  it  there  than  to  see  the  Madonna 
in  the  graceful  attitudes  of  a  dancer. 
For  bright  as  the  Purple  Crocus  may 
appear  at  times,  I  cannot  but  think 
that  its  deepest  expression  is  one  of 
quiet  and  repose.  It  may  be  beautiful 
in  the  broad  mid-day  sunshine,  but  not 
with  its  fullest  beauty.  Go  into  the 
Nottingham  meadows,  where  the  plant 
grows  wild,  some  warm  afternoon  in 
March,  when  the  dreamy  sun  has 
just  strength  to  unfold  the  petals,  and 
look  at  the  broad  pale  sheets  of  lilac 
bloom  outspread  upon  the  early  grass, 
whose  sweet  young  green  is  only  just 
beginning  to  recover  from  the  winter's 
frost,  the  blooms  here  thin  and  scattered, 
hardly  to  be  distinguished  from  water 
left  by  the  retiring  floods,  and  here 
varied  with  the  dark  green  flowerless 
patches  of  the  Autumn  Crocus.1  In  that 
distant  colour  it  can  never  be  surpassed ; 
we  see  it  in  the  fulness  of  its  glory. 
Approach  too  near,  and  the  enchant- 
ment vanishes.  The  fair  ranks  are  now 

1  [The  author  means  the  Colchicum  autumnale,  though 
this  is  not  a  Crocus. — H.  N.  E.] 

33  c 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

seen  trampled  by  the  foot,  and  bent  and 
broken  by  the  winds.  Neither  is  there 
the  beauty  we  should  expect  in  the 
individual  flowers.  We  gather  one  or 
two,  and  the  colour  seems  weak  and 
pale ;  here  and  there,  on  the  ground 
before  us,  is  a  touch  of  livelier  purple, 
but  it  fades  away  as  we  approach  it. 
And  yet  we  remember  the  time  when 
we  saw  no  imperfections  there,  when 
the  blooms  were  as  lovely  as  now  we 
think  them  at  a  distance.  Can  it  be 
that  our  enjoyment  from  them  has  really, 
then,  diminished?  By  no  means  so. 
Nature  asks  of  us  no  superstitious  blind- 
ness ;  and  increased  sensibility  to  beauty 
will  abundantly  make  amends  for  what- 
ever losses  it  may  bring.  We  gather  a 
bunch  of  flowers,  and  withdraw,  and  let 
the  old  enchantment  of  the  distant  purple 
return  and  gather  upon  us.  And  then 
we  look  at  the  few  well-selected  flowers 
in  our  hand,  and  let  the  mind  wander 
in  the  depths  of  those  fair-striped  cups, 
their  colour  so  fresh,  so  cool  and  delicate, 
and  yet  not  too  cool  with  that  central 
yellow  stamen-column,  and  the  stigma 
emerging  from  it  like  a  fiery-orange 
lamp.  And  now  in  its  turn  we  feel 
the  full  charm  and  superiority  of  the 
34 


The  Purple  Crocus 

Purple  Crocus.  Try  in  the  same  way 
to  lose  yourself  in  one  of  the  golden 
cups,  and  you  will  see  that  the  mind 
can  hardly  endure  to  linger  within  the 
walls  of  that  burning  palace : — no  rest 
or  coolness  is  met  with  to  refresh  us 
there.  But  the  Purple  Crocus,  partly 
from  the  full  materials  for  colour-con- 
trast afforded  by  its  interior,  partly  from 
the  exceeding  delicacy  of  tint,  the  lilac 
stripes  and  markings,  the  transparent 
veins,  and  the  pale  watery  lake  which 
lies  at  the  bottom  of  the  cup,  seems  to 
bear  us  away  to  some  enchanted  spot, 
a  fairyland  of  colour,  where  no  shadow 
ever  falls — a  land  of  dim  eternal  twilight 
and  never-fading  flowers.  Note,  too, 
the  difference  betwixt  the  Crocuses  with 
regard  to  the  stigma.  In  the  Purple 
Crocus,  where  it  is  needed  to  complete 
the  harmony  of  the  flower,  it  rises  long 
and  flame-tipped  out  of  the  tall  bundle 
of  yellow  stamens.  In  the  Yellow  Cro- 
cus, on  the  contrary,  it  is  not  needed 
for  any  special  purpose,  so  that  the 
stamens  are  left  very  short,  and  the 
stigma  is  low  sunk  between  them. 
Notice  also  the  curve  of  the  outside 
of  the  Purple  Crocus  cup  in  a  well- 
selected  flower,  and  observe  how  quiet 
35 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

and  solemnly  beautiful  it  is,  in  perfect 
harmony  with  the  general  expression. 
Most  solemn  curves  are  but  little  varied, 
as  that  of  a  dome,  for  instance,  or  of 
the  sky,  or  of  the  sea-horizon. 


IV 

The   Violet 

MILTON  in  his  "  Lycidas  "  speaks 
of  the  "  glowing  violet."  What 
does  he  mean  ?  Partly,  no  doubt, 
he  would  contrast  the  colder, 
bluer  tints  of  the  Dog  Violet  with  the 
purple  of  the  scented  kind,  a  purple  which 
catches  the  eye  in  a  dim  uncertain  way, 
known  to  all  Violet  seekers,  when  the 
flower  lies  half-hidden  amongst  herbage, 
so  that  we  doubt  whether  we  have  really 
discovered  one  or  no.  This  is  Shake- 
speare's "violets  dim."  But  that  is  not 
all.  We  find  that  a  perfectly  scentless 
flower  impresses  us  as  cold.  If  the  Rose 
or  White  Jessamine  were  scentless,  it 
would  seem  cold  like  the  Camellia  or 
Blue  Gentian  of  the  Alps.  As  it  is,  we 
think  them  warm.  This  feeling,  of  course, 
may  be  modified  by  other  circumstances, 
a  smooth,  glossy  plant  seeming  colder  than 
a  hairy  or  woolly  one ;  but  the  feeling 
37 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

still  is  there.  And  this,  I  believe,  leads 
Milton  to  call  the  Violet  "  glowing."  If 
it  were  not  fragrant,  the  term  would  have 
little  meaning ;  as  it  is,  an  idea  suggests 
itself  that  the  flower  is  slowly  burning,  and 
an  aroma  rising  up  from  it  like  incense.1 
And  it  is  singular  to  see  what  a  very 
faint  perfume  can  give  an  impression  of 
warmth.  We  often  smell  carefully  at 
flowers  without  detecting  the  slightest 
odour,  or  perhaps  nothing  more  than  we 
find  in  the  Snowdrop — a  cold,  feeble, 
unpleasant  smell,  like  vegetable  tissues 
crushed,  which  is  altogether  nugatory. 
But  let  there  be  real  perfume,  though 
faint  as  that  of  the  Pyrus  japonica  or 
Crocus,  and  we  recognise  it  at  once  as  a 
warm  atmosphere  about  the  flower.  The 
contrast  between  the  Scented  and  the 
Dog  Violet  is  a  very  remarkable  one. 
How  nearly  they  are  alike  in  general 
aspect,  yet  how  wide  a  difference  in  the 
details !  First  there  are  the  leaves. 
Those  of  the  Scented  Violet  you  can  tell 

1  [There  is  undoubtedly  some  correlation  between  the 
scent  and  the  heat  of  flowers.  In  several  of  the  aroids 
the  rise  of  temperature  can  be  measured  at  the  same  time 
that  the  scent  is  most  offensive.  It  is  possible  that  this 
may  be  in  all  flowers,  but  too  slight  to  be  measured  ;  and 
it  is  only  true  with  flowers — scented  leaves  are  not  so 
affected.— H.  N.  E.] 

38 


The  Violet 

at  a  glance,  before  the  flowers  are  come, 
by  their  larger  size,  rounder  heart-shape, 
downiness,  and,  above  all,  by  that  fresher 
green  upon  which,  in  February  and 
March,  we  always  look  so  hopefully, 
remembering  the  treasures  which  per- 
haps lie  hidden  there.  There  is  nothing 
at  all  of  such  promise  in  the  darker 
purplish-tinted  leaves  of  the  Dog  Violet, 
though  they  have  a  smoother,  neater, 
more  regular  and  finished  look.  Then, 
as  to  the  flowers,  no  matter  whether 
white  or  purple,  there  is  generally  a  rich- 
ness and  force  in  the  colour  of  the 
Scented  Violet  which  impresses  us  deeply 
the  moment  we  detect  it  in  the  hedge — 
a  richness  which  seems  almost  worthy  of 
such  fragrance,  the  one  translating  the 
other,  as  it  were,  into  a  different  lan- 
guage. How  unlike  the  Dog  Violet, 
with  its  larger  and  gayer,  but  less  im- 
pressive, lilac  flowers !  And  yet  this 
latter  seems  to  have  managed  everything 
according  to  the  most  approved  fashion. 
It  has  lessened  its  leaves,  made  its  blos- 
soms more  conspicuous  in  colour,  and 
greatly  increased  their  size  and  number. 
The  leaves,  too,  are  neater  and  more  cor- 
rect, freed  from  hairiness  and  irregulari- 
ties ;  and  the  whole  plant  has  a  smoother 
39 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

and  more  polished  look.  It  sets  itself  in 
far  more  prominent  situations,  as  if  to 
court  our  notice,  is  everywhere  visible  in 
the  hedge,  in  the  wood,  and  on  the  top 
of  sunny  open  banks ;  while  the  Scented 
kind  has  a  sort  of  rarity  just  enough  to 
make  it  precious,  in  unfavourable  places 
it  cannot  bloom  at  all,  so  that  we  search 
over  the  leaves  in  vain,  and  it  mostly 
prefers  to  sink  back  into  the  shade,  or 
hide  amongst  the  thick,  close  green  of 
the  rising  hedge-plants.  And  there  is 
apt  to  be  a  bluish  tint  in  the  April  her- 
bage, by  which  this  concealment  is  assisted. 
The  Dog  Violet  is  more  noticeable  from 
the  causes  we  have  already  mentioned — 
the  situation  it  chooses,  where  it  will  be 
little  crowded  or  interfered  with ;  the 
larger  size,  greater  number,  and  more 
conspicuous  colour  of  the  flowers,  and  the 
long  stalks  or  side-shoots  upon  which  it 
sets  them.  On  the  whole,  we  must  con- 
sider the  Dog  Violet  an  unfortunate  plant. 
It  never  gets  the  credit  it  deserves. 
Beautiful  as  it  is  with  those  lilac  blossom 
clusters,  we  can  hardly  bring  ourselves 
to  love  it  deeply — it  strikes  us  so  much 
as  a  degeneration  of  the  Scented  species. 
The  Scented  Violet  seems  like  genius  in 
its  modest  youth,  never  thinking  of  dis- 
40 


The  Violet 

play,1  and  almost  unconscious,  indeed,  of 
its  own  sweetness  and  richness.  The 
Dog  Violet  is  this  genius  drawn  into 
notice,  courted,  flattered,  and  perverted 
by  the  world,  striving  ambitiously  for 
show,  and  quite  unaware  that  its  deepest 
qualities  are  lost. 

But  is  it  not  presumptuous  for  man  to 
depreciate  in  this  way  the  perfect  work 
of  his  Creator?  Must  not  our  hearts  be 
wrong  if  we  look  with  even  the  least  dis- 
satisfaction upon  so  lovely  a  flower  as 
this?  No,  not  necessarily.  For  God 
has  given  us  all  these  things  as  teachers, 
and  the  deepest  moral  truths  are  pre- 
sented by  them  in  symbols.  There  are 
higher  and  lower  degrees  of  beauty  which 
we  are  meant  to  recognise,  and  ugliness 
itself  is  employed  unsparingly,  when  ugli- 
ness is  necessary  to  teach.  The  ape  in 
a  sense  is  beautiful,  fashioned  out  of  micro- 
scopic elements  as  goodly  as  those  of  a 
man  ;  the  further  you  go  in  studying  its 
structure,  the  more  beauty  you  will  find  ; 
yet  in  general  we  rightly  speak  of  it  with 
disgust.  Nevertheless,  the  Dog  Violet 
has  a  beauty  of  its  own  order,  which  will 
yield  much  enjoyment  if  we  will  but  study 

1  [The  same  idea  is  to  be  found  in  Shakespeare,  St. 
Francis  de  Sales,  and  Wordsworth. — H.  N.  E.] 
41 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

it.  It  is  by  no  means  sent  forth  only  to 
be  despised — not  even  the  ape  is  that, 
for  we  may  admire  its  strength  and  easy 
dexterity  of  limb.  The  Dog  Violet  is 
well  fitted  for  the  place  it  occupies ;  it  is 
a  lively,  pleasant,  neat-looking  flower,  and 
its  blossoms  are  very  lasting.  But  in  the 
qualities  which  touch  us  most  it  certainly 
is  deficient ;  and  on  comparing  it  with 
the  Scented  Violet,  as  we  cannot  possibly 
help  doing,  since  we  first  learnt  to  recog- 
nise it  by  its  defects  when  gathered  in 
mistake,  the  lesson  intended  seems  ap- 
parent. Yet  beautiful  as  the  Scented 
Violet  is,  its  colour  will  not  compare  with 
that  of  the  common  Pinguicula  or  Butter- 
wort,  the  Violet  of  the  Marsh.  In  this 
plant,  two  or  three  large  flowers,  shaped 
not  unlike  the  Violet,  but  on  longer  stalks, 
and  of  far  richer  purple,  rise  up  from  a 
circle  of  broad,  flat  leaves,  of  light  yel- 
lowish-green, ever  wet  with  unctuous 
secretion,  and  beautiful  in  their  contrast 
with  the  flowers  beyond  almost  anything 
I  know.  Yet  one  defect — they  have  no 
smell.  Fragrance  on  the  whole  seems 
less  common  in  marsh  and  water  plants. 
We  find  it  rather  in  the  Thymes,  Laven- 
ders, Roses,  and  Myrtles,  and  the  tenants 
of  a  drier  soil.  Yet  even  in  England 
42 


The  Violet 

we  have  the  Scented  Cane,1  the  Yellow 
Water-lily,  and  Bog  Myrtle,  besides 
other  offshoots  from  the  drier  orders,  as 
Meadow-sweet  and  the  aquatic  species  of 
Mint.  But  when  we  do  find  fragrance 
in  the  colder  and  more  watery-looking 
plants,  the  effect  is  more  delicious  from 
the  contrast.  It  hangs  like  a  warm  atmos- 
phere about  them,  and  seems  like  a  super- 
added  life.  Take,  for  instance,  the  Scented 
Water-lily  of  foreign  lands ;  or  the  Hya- 
cinths and  Narcissuses,  which  have  all  a 
watery  cast  about  them.  One  word  more, 
and  then  we  quit  this  subject.  Observe 
how  the  footstalk  of  the  Scented  Violet 
sweeps  over  in  an  arch,  and  grasps  the 
flower  at  the  top  by  means  of  the  broad, 
flat  lobes  of  the  calyx,  which  sit  astride 
like  a  saddle.  But  we  cannot  see  the 
junction  of  the  calyx  with  its  stalk.  That 
is  covered  by  an  upward  prolongation  of 
each  separate  lobe  or  sepal ;  and  the  con- 
sequence is,  that  each  sepal  has  the  look 
of  a  loose  piece  pasted  on,  the  outer  one 
slightly  overlapping  that  immediately  above 
it.  Now,  the  more  usual  way  is  for  the 
calyx  to  appear  but  a  swollen  continuation 
of  the  flower-stalk,  so  that  the  joining 

1  \Acorus  calamus,  more  commonly  called  the  Sweet 
Rush.— H.  N.  E.] 

43 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

point  is  clear  enough,  as  in  the  Pingui- 
cula,  which  we  have  already  mentioned. 
And  we  should  have  expected  that  the 
contrary  arrangement  would  be  highly 
unpleasing,  as  giving  a  sense  of  insecurity. 
But  it  is  not  so  at  all.  Nature  delights 
in  astonishing  us,  and  every  now  and  then 
will  start  out  of  the  beaten  path  to  gain 
her  end  by  some  altogether  unexpected 
means,  always  making  it  worth  while  by 
gaining  some  unlooked-for  beauty.  This, 
at  least,  is  the  surface  aspect  of  the  ques- 
tion ;  more  truly  the  one  plan  is  in  its 
place  as  necessary,  and  as  much  a  matter 
of  course  as  the  other.  This  calyx  struc- 
ture is  best  seen  in  the  Scented  Violet ; 
in  the  Dog  Violet  the  sepals  are  narrower 
and  more  widely  separated. 


44 


The   Cowslip 

FEW  of  our  wild  flowers  give  intenser 
pleasure  than  the  Cowslip,  yet  per- 
haps there  is  scarcely  any  whose 
peculiar  beauty  depends  so  much 
upon  locality  and  surroundings.  We  feel 
this  especially  when  walking  through  some 
rich  undulating  pasture-country  with  well- 
grown  trees  and  hedges,  and  far  away 
from  all  thoughts  of  town,  if  we  come 
suddenly  upon  a  meadow  with  thousands 
of  these  flowers  scattered  over  it  like 
white  flocks  of  early  lambs ;  and  then, 
as  we  gather  one  after  another  the 
bunches  of  pale  unequal  fingers,  how 
delicious  it  is  to  inhale  the  sweet  odour, 
and  look  into  the  quaintly-spotted  cups! 
There  is  a  homely  simplicity  about  the 
Cowslip,  much  like  that  of  the  Daisy, 
though  more  pensive — the  quiet  sober 
look  of  an  unpretending  country-girl,  not 
strikingly  beautiful  in  feature  or  attire, 
45 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

but  clean  and  fresh  as  if  new-bathed  in 
milk,  and  carrying  us  away  to  thoughts 
of  dairies,  flocks,  and  pasturage,  and  the 
manners  of  a  simple  primitive  time,  some 
golden  age  of  shepherd-life  long  since 
gone  by.  And  this  is  one  of  the  most 
intense  delights  of  flowers.  They  afford 
such  a  perfect  escape  from  our  artificial 
nineteenth-century  way  of  living,  appear- 
ing just  such  a  simple  unsophisticated  race 
of  creatures  as  we  might  meet  with  in  a 
fairy  tale.  All  the  restless,  uncomfortable 
passions  of  constitutions  sapped  by  disease, 
the  vices  generated  in  close-pressed  hot- 
beds of  humanity,  the  anxieties  and  frauds 
of  the  commercial  world,  seem  wholly  to 
have  passed  away,  and  we  have  come 
into  a  region  where  the  inhabitants  are 
simple  and  good,  where  evil  is  rare  and 
slight,  and  not  the  fast  clinging  thing  we 
know.  And  it  does  not  matter  at  all  that 
the  precise  historian  tells  us  there  never 
was  a  golden  shepherd  age  like  that 
which  we  are  visioning.  We  know  well 
enough  that  it  is  so.  We  know  that  it 
supposes  incompatible  advantages — the 
good  of  all  seasons  in  one.  But  our 
golden  age  is  real,  for  it  exists  now,  and 
in  these  flowers.  And  even  if  we  chance 
to  live  where  rural  simplicity  is  rare,  we 
46 


The  Cowslip 

may  still  rejoice  for  what  slight  symbol 
of  it  is  preserved  imperishably  in  the 
Cowslip. 

Cowslips !  how  the  children  love  them, 
and  go  out  into  the  fields  on  the  sunny 
April  mornings  to  collect  them  in  their 
little  baskets,  and  then  come  home  and 
pick  the  pips  to  make  sweet  unintoxicat- 
ing  wine,  preserving  at  the  same  time 
untouched  a  bunch  of  the  goodliest  flowers 
as  a  harvest-sheaf  of  beauty !  And  then 
the  white  soft  husks  are  gathered  into 
balls,  and  tossed  from  hand  to  hand  till 
they  drop  to  pieces,  to  be  trodden  upon 
and  forgotten.  And  so  at  last,  when  each 
sense  has  had  its  fill  of  the  flower,  and 
they  are  thoroughly  tired  of  their  play, 
the  children  rest  from  their  celebration  of 
the  Cowslip.  Blessed  are  such  flowers 
that  appeal  to  every  sense.  There  is 
nothing  here  possible  of  vulgar  gluttony, 
but  just  a  graceful  recognition  of  the  lower 
nature,  which  steps  in  for  once  as  the 
imagination's  guest.  May  not  this  be 
part  of  the  reason  why  the  Cowslip  is  so 
dearly  loved  ?  Cowslip !  The  name  is 
of  ancient  Saxon  origin,  and  very  appro- 
priate if  we  consider  it  well.  I  have 
already  said  that  the  plant  reminds  us  of 
flocks  of  cattle  feeding — at  first  sight  I 
47 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

think  of  sheep  and  lambs  more  parti- 
cularly ;  and  these  ideas  are  carried  out 
in  the  whiteness  and  milky  cleanliness  of 
the  sleek  downy  skin,  in  the  fat  legs  of 
unequal  size,  with  their  lame  irregular 
drooping,  as  it  might  be  the  legs  of  the 
little  ones  crowding  round  their  mothers, 
and  the  flowers  breathing  fragrance  sweeter 
than  the  sweetest  breath  of  kine.  I  know 
how  little  sensible  these  remarks  will 
appear  to  the  unimaginative ;  but  I  am 
dealing  with  facts  as  they  are,  and  not 
as  we  may  think  they  ought  to  be.  Our 
impressions  of  flowers  are  largely  built 
up  of  these  broken  multitudinous  hintings, 
often  exceedingly  vague  and  indefinite, 
but  by  no  means  wholly  arbitrary.  It 
is  from  these  dim  suggestions  that  our 
ancestors  have  drawn  our  present  names 
of  flowers,  sometimes  with  deep  insight 
and  poetic  truth,  sometimes  with  all  sorts 
of  flighty  and  fantastic  colouring,  lent  by 
medicine,  astrology,  or  alchemy.  To  take 
a  few  examples.  In  Bee  Orchis,  Turk's- 
Cap  Lily,  Corn  Blue-bottle,  the  resem- 
blance is  unmistakably  clear,  the  last  name 
of  course  pointing  at  the  swollen  look  of 
the  flower-cup.  Archangel  (White  Dead 
Nettle),  Lady's  Fingers,  Cuckoo  Pint, 
and  Cowslip  are  more  indefinite ;  you  feel 
48 


The  Cowslip 

them  to  be  true,  but  cannot  perhaps  say 
why.  Moneywort1  we  begin  to  feel  more 
arbitrary,  as  are  Devil's  Bit  and  Solomon's 
Seal ;  whilst,  finally,  Lycopsis,  or  Wolf- 
like  Bugloss,  is  wholly  unmeaning  and 
based  on  no  resemblance  whatsoever. 

Now,  the  superficial  appearance  of  the 
Cowslip  is  strongly  suggestive  of  sheep, 
but  if  you  will  try  to  coin  a  name  from 
this  suggestion  you  will  feel  that  it  is 
quite  inferior.  Lambs  and  their  Mothers, 
Lambs'  Legs,  or  Lambs  in  the  Meadow, 
might  seem  truer  to  the  eye,  but  they 
would  impress  us  far  less  forcibly.  And 
why  is  this  ?  It  is  because  they  leave 
out  the  fragrance,  the  deepest  sugges- 
tion of  all.  There  is  something  in  that 
balmy  sweetness  which  irresistibly  con- 
nects itself  with  cows.  And  more,  in 
looking  at  the  Cowslip  we  are  always 
most  forcibly  struck  by  its  apparent 
wholesomeness  and  health.  This  whole- 
someness  is  quite  unmistakable.  It  be- 
longs even  to  the  smell,  so  widely  different 
from  the  often  oppressive  perfume  of 

1  [Moneywort,  from  the  shape  of  the  leaf;  Devil's  Bit, 
from  the  old  legend  that  the  shortened  root  had  been 
bitten  by  the  Devil,  and  Solomon's  Seal,  from  the  seal- 
like  appearance  of  a  section  of  the  root.  The  "  wholly 
unmeaning "  name  of  Lycopsis  is  now  given  up  ;  the 
plant  is  classed  as  an  Anchusa. — H.  N.  E.] 

49  D 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

other  plants,  as  Lilies,  Narcissuses,  or 
Violets.  Now  just  such  a  healthy  milk- 
fed  look,  just  such  a  sweet  healthy  odour, 
is  what  we  find  in  cows — an  odour  which 
breathes  around  them  as  they  sit  at  rest 
in  the  pasture,  and  is  believed  by  many, 
perhaps  with  truth,  to  be  actually  cura- 
tive of  disease.  So  much,  then,  for  the 
name  of  our  plant.  The  "lips,"  of 
course,  is  but  a  general  reference  to  the 
shape  of  the  petals,  and  indicates  the 
source  of  the  fragrance.1 

"  Cowslips  wan,  that  hang  the  pensive  head," 

writes  Milton  in  the  "  Lycidas."  But  this 
is  not  true.  There  certainly  are  some 
plants  in  which  Nature  seems  to  hint 
at  an  appearance  of  disease,  and  then 
by  some  special  means  converts  it  into 
a  beauty.  Take,  for  instance,  the  little 
gland-tipped  hairs  which  clothe  the  young 
blossom-stalks  of  the  flowering  currant. 
They  look,  at  first  sight,  a  little  ques- 
tionable, and  we  might  doubt  if  they  were 
not  something  like  aphides  or  mildew. 
But,  on  examining  closer,  we  find  that 

1  [Few  plant-names  have  been  more  discussed  than 
Cowslip  ;  but  the  N.E.D.  has  now  proved  that,  whatever 
the  association  with  the  animal  may  have  been,  the  first 
syllable  is  the  Cow,  and  the  last  syllable  has  no  connec- 
tion with  human  or  other  lips. — H.  N.  E.] 

5° 


The  Cowslip 

they  are  fragrant,  and  the  fragrance 
shapes  the  ambiguous  suggestion,  so  that 
we  can  view  them  with  unmixed  pleasure. 
And  it  is  the  same  with  the  glands  be- 
neath the  leaves  of  many  plants,  as,  for 
instance,  those  of  the  common  black  cur- 
rant. In  themselves  they  can  scarcely 
be  considered  as  beautiful,  but  the  eye 
takes  delight  in  them  from  the  moment 
we  discover  that  they  are  scented.  There 
is  something  of  the  same  sort  again  in 
the  Primrose.  That  flower  may  justly  be 
described  as  pale,  as  if  from  long  lingering 
beneath  the  shadows  of  the  woods,  shut 
out  from  light  and  air ;  and  at  this  Shake- 
speare has  gently  and  delicately  hinted 
in  the  lines  which  compare  it  to  a  girl 
not  as  yet  consumptive,  but  gifted  with 
that  too  early  loveliness  which  will  even- 
tually ripen  into  the  disease — 

"Pale  primroses, 

Which  die  unmarried  ere  they  may  behold 
Bright  Phoebus  in  his  strength,  a  malady 
Most  incident  to  maids." 

Yet  we  cannot  call  even  the  Primrose 
"wan."  That  would  mean  that  it  had  a 
sickly  expression,  a  thing  which  is  at  all 
times  painful  and  revolting,  and  would 
be  especially  so  in  a  flower.  And  the 
51 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

Cowslip,  as  we  have  said,  is  a  singularly 
healthy  -  looking  plant ;  indeed,  nothing 
about  it  is  more  remarkable.  It  has  none 
of  the  delicacy  and  timidity  of  the  Prim- 
rose. All  its  characters  are  well  and 
healthily  pronounced.  The  paleness  is 
uniform,  steady,  and  rather  impresses  us 
as  whiteness,  and  the  yellow  of  the  cup 
is  as  rich  as  gold.  The  odour  is  not 
faint,  but  saccharine  and  luscious.  It  does 
not  shrink  into  the  sheltered  covert,  but 
courts  the  free  air  and  sunshine  of  the 
open  fields ;  and  instead  of  its  flowers 
peeping  timidly  from  behind  surrounding 
leaves,  it  raises  them  boldly  on  a  stout 
sufficient  stalk,  the  most  conspicuous  ob- 
ject in  the  meadow.  We  have  in  the 
Cowslip  no  finer  spiritual  suggestions, 
none  of  the  more  evanescent  and  retir- 
ing beauties,  except  perhaps  in  the  sleek 
white  skin,  with  its  exquisite  softness  of 
tone.  Its  poetry  is  the  poetry  of  common 
life,  but  of  the  most  delicious  common  life 
that  can  exist.  The  plant  is  in  some 
respects  careless  to  the  verge  of  disorder ; 
and  you  should  note  that  carelessness 
well  till  you  feel  the  force  of  it,  as 
especially  in  the  lame  imperfection  of  the 
flower  buds,  only,  perhaps,  half  of  them 
well  developed,  and  the  rest  dangling 
52 


The  Cowslip 

all  of  unequal  lengths.  When  irregularity 
is  pretty  constant  it  is  sure  to  mean  some- 
thing, as  in  the  lop-sided  form  of  the 
Begonia  leaves,  or  the  unequally  divided 
corolla  of  the  Speedwell. 

Essentially,  the  Cowslip  and  Primrose 
are  only  the  same  plant  in  two  different 
forms,  the  one  being  convertible  into 
the  other.  The  Primrose  is  the  Cowslip 
of  the  woods  and  sheltered  lanes,  the 
Cowslip  the  Primrose  of  the  fields.  And 
very  interesting  it  is  to  observe  how  en- 
tirely different  is  the  expression  of  the 
two  original  extremes,  in  many  respects 
so  much  alike,  and  even  in  the  wild 
state  passing  into  each  other  by  all  sorts 
of  intermediate  varieties.  The  Oxlip 
and  the  Polyanthus,  with  its  tortoise-shell 
blossoms,  are  two  of  these  intermediate 
forms ; l  the  Polyanthus  being  a  great 
triumph  of  the  gardener's  art,  a  delight- 
ful flower,  quite  a  new  creation,  and 
originally  produced  by  cultivation  of  the 
Primrose.  Another  example  of  this  wide 
difference  in  the  expression  of  plants 
which  are  essentially  the  same  is  seen  in 
the  Dog  and  Scented  Violets. 

1  [The  Cowslip,  Primrose,  and  Oxlip  are  quite  distinct, 
and  are  known  as  P.  veris.  P.  vulgaris.  and  P.  elatior. 

-H.  N.  E.] 

53 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

Yet,  in  spite  of  what  we  have  said,  it 
is  by  no  means  uncommon  to  find  Cow- 
slips growing  in  the  woods.  And  at 
first  sight  you  may  possibly  be  inclined 
to  think  them  better  than  usual,  the 
plant  is  so  large  and  well  nourished. 
But  you  may  generally  be  sure  that  the 
favourite  locality  of  a  plant  is,  on  the 
whole,  that  which  suits  it  best.  And  the 
advantages  of  the  Wood  Cowslip  are 
only  apparent :  they  go  no  farther  than 
the  eye.  Just  compare  it  with  the  Field 
Cowslip,  and  see  what  it  has  lost  in 
whiteness,  and  how  the  compactness  and 
true  proportion  of  the  one  plant  contrast 
with  the  ungoverned  looseness  of  the 
other.  I  take  the  Wood  Cowslip  at  its 
best.  Even  in  cattle  and  vegetables,  we 
may  be  confident,  size  is  not  the  chiefest 
good.  "  The  life  is  more  than  meat, 
and  the  body  than  raiment." 


54 


VI 

The  Primrose 


"^T^TTTHAT  a  change  there  is  in 
\  V  /  turning  from  the  Cowslip 
YY  to  the  Primrose!  This  last 
seems  the  very  flower  of 
delicacy  and  refinement  ;  not  that  it 
shrinks  from  our  notice,  for  few  plants 
are  more  easily  seen,  coming  as  it  does 
when  there  is  a  dearth  of  flowers,  when 
the  first  birds  are  singing,  and  the  first 
bees  humming,  and  the  earliest  green 
putting  forth  in  the  March  and  April 
woods.  And  it  is  one  of  those  plants 
which  dislikes  to  be  looking  cheerless, 
but  keeps  up  a  smouldering  fire  of 
blossom,  from  the  very  opening  of  the 
year,  if  the  weather  will  permit.  The 
source  of  its  expression  is  a  little  dif- 
ficult to  trace,  arising  from  a  subtle 
combination  of  certain  finer  elements 
which  are  more  decided,  or  else  awant- 
ing,  in  the  Cowslip. 
55 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

Now  in  examining  the  Primrose  we 
must  be  careful  in  our  choice  of  plants, 
for  hardly  any  flower  is  more  variable 
both  in  colour  and  in  form ;  even  in  a 
wild  state  its  flowers  are  sometimes  al- 
most pink,1  and  in  the  leaves  we  may 
find  any  sort  of  colour — dark  green, 
yellowish  green,  or  green  with  a  tinge 
of  blue,  this  last  being  an  inclination 
towards  the  marked  blue-green  of  the 
Cowslip.  Each  kind  has  generally  some 
peculiar  beauties  of  its  own,  but  the  soft 
dull  tints  are,  on  the  whole,  the  best. 
The  dark  leaves  have  sometimes  a 
beautiful  softness,  but  are  apt  to  be  a 
little  wanting  in  character,  whilst  the 
glossier  and  brighter  green  look  harsh 
and  metallic,  and  their  fur,  besides,  is 
coarser.  It  is,  however,  by  far  the  best 
plan  to  examine  all  kinds  carefully,  for 
most  of  the  faults  are  only  exaggerations 
of  some  right  tendency,  and  may  help  us 
to  discover  new  beauties  in  the  more 
favourably  developed  plants.  Find  out 
some  Primroses,  then,  in  a  sheltered 
wood,  the  place  where  they  flourish 
best,  perhaps  growing  in  damper  shade 

1  [In  some  parts,  especially  in  South  Wales,  it  is  not 
uncommon  to  find  wild  Primroses  which  are  more  than 
almost  pink  ;  they  are  a  decided  red. — H.  N.  E.] 
56 


The  Primrose 

amongst  the  mossy  roots  of  some  old 
beech,  or  springing  up  beneath  the  hazel- 
bushes,  amongst  Violets  and  White  Ane- 
mones and  the  more  abundant  Dog's 
Mercury  with  its  small  green  flowers, 
from  a  floor  which,  with  all  its  green, 
looks  so  beautifully  dry,  and  is  guarded 
by  an  atmosphere  of  such  echoing  still- 
ness that  we  scarce  feel  out  of  doors : 
at  least,  these  are  the  situations  in 
which  I  have  found  the  Primrose  finest, 
but  it  is  often  very  beautiful  on  shel- 
tered banks.  The  flower  is  of  a  most 
unusual  colour,  a  pale  delicate  yellow 
slightly  tinged  with  green.  And  the 
better  flowers  impress  us  by  a  peculiar 
paleness,  not  dependent  upon  any  feeble- 
ness of  hue,  which  we  always  find  un- 
pleasing,  but  rather  upon  the  exquisite 
softness  of  their  tone.  And  we  must  not 
overlook  the  little  round  stigma,  that 
green  and  translucent  gem,  which  forms 
the  pupil  of  the  eye,  and  is  surrounded 
by  a  deeper  circle  of  orange,  which  helps 
it  to  shine  forth  more  clearly.  Many 
flowers  have  a  somewhat  pensive  look, 
but  in  the  pensiveness  of  the  Primrose 
there  is  a  shade  of  melancholy — a  melan- 
choly, however,  which  awakens  no  thought 
of  sadness,  and  does  but  give  interest  to 
57 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

the  pale,  sweet,  inquiring  faces  which  the 
plant  upturns  towards  us.  Now  the 
perfection  of  softness  of  colour  and  the 
perfection  of  this  pensive  expression  will 
scarcely  ever  be  found  in  the  same  indi- 
vidual. The  largest  and  softest  blossoms 
are  too  loose  and  flagging  :  we  find  them 
in  over-nourished  plants,  and  they  have 
sacrificed  everything  to  sensuous  qualities, 
to  size,  and  the  perfection  of  their  creamy 
tone.  The  best  expression  must  be  looked 
for  in  a  smaller  and  more  compact  flower. 
And  it  will  be  noticed  that  in  some  Prim- 
roses the  stigma  is  apparently  awanting, 
because  shorter  than  the  stamens,  which 
thus  occupy  the  centre  in  its  place.  Now 
the  softness  of  the  eye  is  mainly  depen- 
dent on  the  stigma ;  but  in  spite  of  a 
little  harshness,  there  is  often  a  strange 
beauty  in  these  stamen-showing  flowers, 
and  I  think  that  the  finest  expression  I 
have  ever  met  with  has  been  in  some  of 
them. 

In  the  Primrose,  as  a  whole,  we  cannot 
help  being  struck  by  an  exceeding  soft- 
ness and  delicacy  ;  there  is  nothing  sharp, 
strong,  or  incisive;  the  smell  is  "the 
faintest  and  most  ethereal  perfume,"  as 
Mrs.  Stowe  has  called  it  in  her  "  Sunny 
Memories,"  though  she  was  mistaken  in 
58 


The  Primrose 

saying  that  it  disappears  when  we  pluck 
the  flower.  I  do  not  mention  this  mistake 
in  any  fault-finding  spirit,  but  to  show 
how  needful  it  is  for  accurate  observers 
to  examine  many  specimens ;  individual 
Primroses  are  occasionally  scentless,  but 
it  is  merely  the  result  of  accident.  This 
softness  is  very  striking,  too,  in  the  calyx, 
with  its  long,  light,  tapering  fingers,  so 
different  from  the  broad,  almost  triangular 
teeth  of  the  loose  husky  calyx  of  the 
Cowslip,  this  being,  in  fact,  one  of  the 
botanical  distinctions  betwixt  the  plants. 
Then  look  at  the  leaves,  those  broad, 
arching  tongues,  so  deeply  wrinkled  and 
uneven ;  their  very  margins,  too,  wavy, 
plaited,  and  irregularly  indented ;  the  teeth, 
with  their  sharp,  white  vein-points,  softened 
by  an  intervening  fringe  of  down,  and 
tearing  out  almost  into  raggedness  as 
they  near  the  footstalk,  from  which  the 
leaf  gradually  opens,  with  something  of 
the  outline  of  a  tongue  of  water,  into  the 
flatter,  broadly-rounded  tip.  You  know 
what  I  refer  to  here  :  the  wavy  irregular 
outline  which  spilt  water  so  often  takes 
when  alternately  flowing  and  creeping 
slowly,  and,  as  it  were,  tentatively,  along 
the  ground.  And  the  more  the  leaves 
arch  over,  the  better  will  the  effect  of 
59 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

this  be  seen,  in  their  flowing,  careless, 
easy  look,  as  if  they  were  pouring  out  of 
the  plant.  You  will  observe  the  gradual 
disappearance  of  the  teeth  where  the  leaf 
flattens  out  towards  its  extremity,  leaving 
scarce  any  irregularity  there  except  from 
those  water-like  sinuosities  of  the  outline. 
It  is  this  which  gives  the  rounded  tongue- 
like  aspect,  which  sometimes  in  the  more 
down-bent  leaves  almost  suggests  an  idea 
of  languor,  as  if  they  were  stretching  out 
athirst  for  falling  rain.  Yet  the  moment 
the  word  arises  we  reject  it  as  inappropri- 
ate ;  and  though  I  have  spoken  of  the 
teeth  disappearing  at  the  end  of  the  leaf, 
it  will  be  found  that  they  are  really  there, 
but  smaller  and  turned  downwards,  so  as 
to  be  out  of  sight.  And  yet  one  thing 
more  has  entered  into  the  effect  we  noticed : 
if  you  look  at  the  midrib  of  the  leaf  in 
profile,  you  will  see  that  towards  the  end 
it  curves  gradually  upwards,  so  that  the 
tip  of  the  leaf  is,  in  a  manner,  hooded. 
In  fact,  the  leaf  has  a  double  arch.  But 
the  upper  surface  at  the  end  is  at  times 
so  convex  that  this  curve  may  be  easily 
overlooked  by  a  careless  observer,  though 
in  reality  it  is  always  there.  And  the 
insinuating,  often  sidelong,  bend  of  the 
tip  of  the  leaf,  which  gives  half  the  force 
60 


The  Primrose 

of  the  tongue -like  character,  depends 
mainly  upon  this  slight  and  gradual 
alteration  in  the  curve. 

But  what  marvellous  spell  possesses 
these  leaves,  so  that  each  of  them  falls 
upon  the  heart  with  such  soft  and  silent 
tread ;  nay,  rather  say  that  each  seems 
gifted  with  a  low  voice  heard  in  silence, 
like  that  of  the  last  fruit  when  it  drops  in 
autumnal,  mist  upon  the  dead  damp  gar- 
den path.  But  the  Primrose  leaves  create 
the  silence  in  which  they  speak.  It  is, 
perhaps,  not  mere  fancy  that  Milton's 
line — 

"  Bring  the  rath  primrose  that  forsaken  dies  " — 

is  somewhat  fitted  to  express  this  voice. 
If  I  had  to  find  words  for  it,  the  letter  a, 
long  and  short,  and  tkt  would  seem  par- 
ticularly appropriate.  Such  words  as  path, 
bath,  faith.  This  effect  depends  chiefly 
upon  the  great  breadth  of  the  leaf-tongue, 
and  the  roundness  of  their  extremities, 
assisted  by  other  qualities  of  which  we 
have  spoken,  by  no  means  forgetting  the 
wrinkling,  or  the  dryness,  which  we  shall 
presently  mention.  What  a  difference 
between  these  and  other  tongue-shaped 
leaves,  as  those  of  the  Hart's-Tongue 
Fern ! 

61 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

In  many  Primroses,  then,  you  will  at 
once  be  struck  by  a  certain  dryness  in  the 
look  of  the  leaf;  a  dryness  like  that  of 
an  absorbent  surface,  which  would  be 
nothing  unusual  in  Sage  or  other  such 
parched-up  Labiate,  but  which  becomes 
most  remarkable  when  combined  with 
these  soft  and  fleshy  textures.  And  it 
will  sometimes  make  you  at  first  a  little 
doubtful  as  to  the  impression  you  get 
from  the  leaf.  Harsh,  you  might  say, 
but  never  altogether  so,  for  we  cannot 
help  feeling  that  there  is  a  softness  also 
there,  to  which  the  harshness  yields,  a 
softness  composed  of  many  elements — the 
dull  velvety  colour  of  the  leaf  which  might 
make  you  believe  it  downy,  the  seeming 
readiness  to  bend  any  way  as  though  it 
were  a  piece  of  cloth,  and  especially 
that  plaited  downy  character  of  the 
margin  to  which  we  have  already  alluded. 
Now  we  can  easily  find  specimens  with 
scarce  any  trace  of  harshness,  but  in 
many  of  the  best  the  softness  prevails 
over  the  harshness  without  ever  quite 
effacing  it,  so  that  the  rough  dryness 
may  enter  into  our  conception  for  a 
purpose  I  shall  afterwards  notice.  Con- 
trast these  leaves  and  their  soft  easy 
character  with  the  sharp  swords  of  the 
62 


The  Primrose 

Iris,  or  with  the  leaves  and  stem  in  a 
sprig  of  spotted  Laurel  (Aucuba),  where 
the  lines  are  amongst  the  keenest  and 
most  delicately  forcible  that  I  know ; 
or  with  the  bold  decided  outlines  of  the 
Crown  Imperial,  whose  tall  stem  rises 
like  a  mast  through  the  lower  leaves,  is 
thence  for  a  short  space  bare,  till  it  is 
topped  by  the  crowning  sheaf  of  leaf 
swords,  out  of  which  droop  so  gracefully 
the  large  yellow  wax-like  bells.  Here 
every  line  seems  to  pierce  like  an  arrow, 
the  composition  is  so  clear  and  masterly. 
But  we  have  nothing  at  all  of  this  kind 
in  the  Primrose  ;  it  is  meant  to  impress 
us  as  altogether  soft  and  yielding.  And 
yet  amidst  all  this  softness  the  decision 
is  only  veiled.  Let  but  those  leaves  be 
a  little  too  flat,  or  wide,  or  smooth,  as 
they  often  are  in  over-nourished  speci- 
mens, and  we  shall  detect  the  loss  in  a 
moment.  Look,  too,  at  the  decision  in 
the  lines  of  their  arching,  as  they  gush 
forth  like  a  green  fountain  from  the 
earth,  starting  at  first  more  erect  from 
the  centre  of  the  plant,  and  increasing 
the  curve  as  they  lengthen  in  going  out- 
wards, till  gradually  bent,  pushed  lower 
and  lower  by  those  which  climb  above 
them,  they  finally,  perhaps,  touch  the 
63 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

ground.  The  bulk  of  the  leaves,  how- 
ever, point  very  markedly  upwards, 
being  the  channels  by  which  wet  is  con- 
ducted to  the  centre  of  the  plant,  so 
that  we  may  often  see  them  with  but 
little  of  the  bending-over  appearance,  and 
they  always  seem  shortened  just  in  time 
to  prevent  their  running  into  languid- 
ness.  Now  turn  the  leaf  sideways, 
and  note  the  changed  aspect  of  the 
margin  from  thence,  still  wavy,  but 
more  regular  in  its  festooning,  and  sharp 
with  emphatic  vein-points.  How  this 
contrasts  with  our  former  view  when 
we  were  looking  at  it  rather  from 
above ! 

But  one  of  the  most  beautiful  points 
in  the  Primrose  is  the  manner  in  which 
the  paleness  of  the  flowers  is  taken  up 
by  the  herbage.  Thus  look  at  that  down 
upon  the  flower-stalks,  which  clothes 
them  like  a  soft  thin  halo,  and  seems, 
when  you  nearly  examine  it,  to  resemble 
the  white  silky  fibres  of  that  lovely 
mildew  which  so  often  forms  on  things 
decaying  in  close  places,  a  something  so 
delicate  and  half-transparent  you  think 
that  it  might  melt  at  a  touch.  Follow 
it  thence  to  the  under-surfaces  of  the 
leaves,  with  their  white  midribs  and 
64 


The  Primrose 

veins,  and  see,  with  the  plant  at  some 
little  distance,  what  an  exquisite  soft- 
ness it  produces  there,  faintly  bedimming 
the  already  lighter  green,  and  whitening 
like  hoar-frost  when  placed  in  certain 
aspects.  At  the  down-turned  margin  of 
the  leaf  it  stops,  and  never  appears 
upon  the  upper  surface.  Now  this  pale- 
ness seems  to  hang  about  the  plant  like 
a  mystery,  for  though  the  leaves  of  the 
Primrose  may  at  times  show  a  trace  of 
the  steady  paleness  of  the  Cowslip,  it 
is  more  usually  confined  to  their  under 
surfaces,  and  the  white  flower-stalks  with 
their  clothing  of  down.  And  when  we 
are  looking  at  the  Primrose,  one  or  other 
of  these  downy  changeful  portions  is 
continually  coming  into  view,  so  that 
we  get  a  feeling  as  if  there  hung  about 
the  whole  a  clothing  of  soft  evanescent 
mist,  thickening  about  the  centre  of  the 
plant,  and  the  under  surfaces  of  the 
leaves  which  are  less  exposed  to  the 
sun.  And  then  we  reach  one  of  the 
main  expressions  of  the  Primrose.  When 
we  look  at  the  pale  sweet  flowers,  and 
the  soft-toned  green  of  the  herbage, 
softened  further  here  and  there  by  that 
uncertain  mist  of  down,  the  dryness 
of  the  leaf  and  fur  enters  forcibly  into 
65  E 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

our  impression  of  the  plant,  giving  a 
sense  of  extreme  delicacy  and  need  of 
shelter,  as  if  it  were  some  gentle  crea- 
ture which  shrinks  from  exposure  to  the 
weather. 


66 


VII 

The  Globe  Flower 

WHAT  is  this  flower,  yellow 
and  pale,  and  yet  so  singu- 
larly bright,  yielding  nothing 
in  our  May  gardens  to  Iris, 
Narcissus,  or  Tulip,  and  yet  springing 
up  wild  here  and  there  by  streamlets 
in  the  rocky  dells  amongst  the  mountains 
of  Wales  and  Cumberland  ?  Wherever 
we  meet  with  it,  it  commands  our  in- 
stant homage.  Amidst  the  blaze  of 
gaudy  flowers,  for  all  its  unpretending 
dress,  none  looks  of  a  descent  more 
manifestly  noble.  And  when  wild  we 
always  feel  as  though  it  had  strayed 
from  a  selected  circle.  The  jolly  butter- 
cups and  field  flowers  appear  like  country 
folk ;  it  stands  among  them  all  con- 
spicuous like  a  king.  I  once  saw  it 
in  a  dell  where  it  had  found  for  itself 
a  little  nook  of  green  which  the  common 
wild  flowers  might  not  enter,  and  it  grew 
67 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

there  with  white  flowers  of  the  grass  of 
Parnassus,  the  one  thing  fair  enough 
to  stand  by  its  side.  Only  two  or  three 
blossoms  were  left  (for  it  was  late  in 
August)  lingering  still,  bright  but  very 
pale  as  the  dawn-belated  moon,  and  the 
brawling  stream  spoke  hoarsely  to  them 
in  its  passing  by.  I  have  often  seen  the 
blossoms  finer,  but  they  never  impressed 
me  more  than  these  did  that  misty  morn- 
ing. Globe  Flower !  Why  should 
we  not  call  it  Kingcup?  A  mere 
buttercup  neither  needs  nor  justifies  the 


name.1 


How  interesting  it  is  to  watch  these 
broad  round  blossoms  when  they  open 
in  the  spring,  first  showing  themselves 
of  a  greener  hue,  and  much  the  best 
if  dusted  over,  as  so  frequently  happens, 
with  brown  upon  the  outer  petals.  And 
gradually,  day  by  day,  as  the  flower  en- 
larges, the  clear  brightness  is  seen  coming 
through  the  petals,  as  the  moon  through 
the  folds  of  cloud  which  overlay  her,  till 
at  length  the  full  orb  shines  forth  revealed 
like  a  very  planet  in  its  glory.  The 


1  [Kingcup  is  the  name  of  Calthapalustris^  which  is  not 
a  buttercup,  though  of  the  same  large  family  as  the 
buttercup  ;  and  is  mentioned  as  "  Water-Blobs"  on  p.  189 
— H.  N.  E.] 

68 


The  Globe  Flower 

Globe  Flower  never  properly  expands. 
The  stamens  lie  concealed  within,  and 
we  like  to  know  that  they  are  there, 
but  they  will  scarce  be  seen  till  the 
beauty  of  the  flower  is  gone.  The  clear 
moonlight  tint  is  something  like  that  of 
the  Mimosa,  and  is  one  of  the  most  ex- 
quisite we  know.  It  makes  us  think  of 
some  strange  metal  in  which  gold  and 
silver  are  combined,  and  there  is  further 
a  metallic  cast  about  the  plant  which 
enforces  this  suggestion — a  peculiar  hue, 
and  a  smoothness  in  the  stems  and  leaf- 
stalks as  we  slip  them  through  our  fingers, 
like  the  smoothness  of  a  brazen  wire. 
All  this  fits  in  admirably  with  the  dark 
green  leaves  and  cool  poisonous  habits  of 
the  Ranunculacese.  The  strength  of  the 
Globe  Flower  accordingly  lies  in  the  im- 
pressive brightness,  the  large  size  and 
peculiar  form  of  the  blossom,  and  in  the 
general  smoothness  and  compactness,  and 
the  darkness  and  keenness  of  the  leaves. 
Nothing  about  it  looks  common  from  the 
first  moment  of  its  issuing  from  the 
ground.  And  see  how  peculiarly  those 
leaves  are  dotted  in  the  angles  for  em- 
phasis. We  find  the  same  thing  in  the 
Buttercup  {Ranunculus  repens),  with  which 
the  Globe  Flower  may  be  advantageously 
69 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

compared.  But  the  white  dots  in  the 
Buttercup  are  changes  in  the  colour  of 
the  leaf,  whilst  those  of  the  Globe  Flower 
are  little  translucent  spaces  in  the  angles 
of  the  margin. 


70 


VIII 

The  Blackthorn^   or  Sloe 

IT  bursts  upon  us  suddenly  in  the 
leafless  hedges  of  March,  whitening 
them  here  and  there  like  showers  of 
scattered  spray.  How  beautiful,  but 
how  very  frail !  We  take  a  piece  home, 
and  almost  immediately  it  drops.  In  an- 
other day  or  two  we  pass  the  same  way 
again,  and  the  parent  bloom  is  also  gone, 
defaced  and  half  scattered  to  the  wind. 
The  Blackthorn  seems  but  made  for  a 
passing  glance,  put  together  slightly  and 
carelessly,  as  if  Nature  had  thrown 
us  in  the  uncertain  season  of  spring  a 
little  foretaste  of  the  summer  loveliness 
she  is  preparing,  just  as  she  cheers  us 
now  and  then  with  a  bright,  still,  sunny 
day.  As  we  go  on  towards  summer, 
fruit  blossoms  become  compact  and  more 
finished.  There  is  a  great  advance  from 
the  plum  to  the  pear  and  apple  ;  and  there 
is  just  the  same  from  the  Sloe  to  the 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

Hawthorn.  The  Hawthorn  first  clothes 
itself  in  full  array  of  green,  and  then  puts 
its  blossoms  forth,  loading  its  branches 
with  the  fragrant  snow,  till  the  long  lines 
of  distant  hedge  seem  like  billows  tumb- 
ling over  into  foam.  And  when  we  break 
off  a  branch  how  lovely  the  blossoms  are, 
each  with  its  rounded  petals — a  little  ring 
of  pearls,  and  lovely  most  of  all,  the  half- 
opened  buds,  which  shine  in  the  light 
like  little  balls  of  silver.  And  then  that 
sweet  and  hay-resembling  fragrance,  what 
delightful  thoughts  does  it  recall  of  May 
days  in  the  past !  But  what  a  difference 
between  the  Hawthorn  and  the  Sloe!  In 
this  last,  the  flowers  are  irregularly  scat- 
tered instead  of  being  bound  up  into 
these  dense,  well-compacted  corymbs  of 
the  Hawthorn  blossom.  The  smell  is 
faint,  bitter,  and  disagreeable ;  and  there 
is  a  comparative  harshness  in  the  stamens 
and  centre  of  the  blossom.  The  anthers 
soon  burst,  and  then  all  beauty  disappears, 
for  the  stamens  look  loose  and  disorderly. 
But  the  most  important  difference  lies  in 
the  configuration  of  the  petals.  The 
Hawthorn  blossoms  have  a  compactly 
rounded  make,  and  the  petals  of  each 
flower  are  individually  round  and  hollow, 
and  are  set  in  the  ring  as  accurately  as 
72 


The  Blackthorn,  or  Sloe 

gems  in  a  bracelet.  Yet  at  the  same 
time  there  is  a  crisped,  unfinished  look 
about  their  edges  which  we  always  like 
to  see,  a  specimen  of  that  easy  careless- 
ness of  execution  which  delights  us  in  a 
sketch  by  the  hand  of  some  great  master. 
Trace  this  from  the  opening  buds,  where 
even  from  the  first  appearance  of  the 
white  we  find  the  edge  of  the  petal  curl- 
ing back,  and  rippling  up  into  a  crest, 
giving  force  to  the  bud  by  raising  the 
lines  which  mark  the  disposition  of  its 
contents.  Instances  of  such  carelessness 
and  want  of  precision  and  symmetry 
abound  in  the  animal  and  vegetable 
kingdoms,  but  we  do  not  find  them  in 
the  mineral.  Thus  the  two  sides  of  the 
human  face  are  never  quite  alike,  and 
there  are  a  thousand  similar  lesser  differ- 
ences to  be  observed ;  but  there  is 
undeviating  regularity  in  the  most  un- 
symmetrical  of  crystals.  We  have  already 
likened  the  Hawthorn  flowers  to  a  little 
ring  of  pearls.  And  many  things  concur 
very  beautifully  in  creating  this  resem- 
blance. Each  of  the  petals  is  remarkably 
round.  There  is  no  sort  of  claw,  nor 
any  of  the  usual  tapering  towards  the 
point  of  insertion ;  and  the  petals  scarcely 
at  all  overlap  each  other,  so  that  they 
73 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

look  like  pearls  set  side  by  side.  And 
the  circularity  of  each  is  more  distinctly 
seen  by  reason  of  the  cup-like  hollow- 
ness,  which  holds  a  little  shadow  at  the 
bottom,  with  light  playing  round  it  in 
resemblance  of  the  lustre  of  a  pearl. 

And  now,  if  we  look  once  more  at  that 
crisped  everted  petal  edge,  we  shall  better 
understand  its  meaning.  If  clear  and 
sharp  it  would  not  only  be  much  less 
piquant,  but  would  give  the  flowers,  from 
the  causes  we  have  just  been  considering, 
too  regular  and  artificial  an  aspect.  It 
now  detains  the  eye  sensibly  in  passing 
round  the  margin,  preventing  any  possible 
harshness  of  force,  while  it  adds  to  the 
pearly  delicacy  of  the  colour  by  chasing 
it  with  shadows.  This  crisping,  if  I  re- 
member right,  is  scarcely  noticeable  in  the 
petals  of  the  Scarlet  Hawthorn,  where  the 
colour  would  not  require  it.  And  finally, 
this  crisping  guides  the  eye  right  to  the 
insertion  of  the  petals,  so  that  their  round- 
ness shall  be  most  fully  felt.  Everything 
about  the  Hawthorn  looks  clear,  trans- 
parent, and  full  of  light.  The  petals  of 
the  Sloe  are  very  different — their  round- 
ness inclines  somewhat  more  to  the  oval, 
and  their  opaquer  white  is  well  calculated 
for  effect  upon  the  darker  leafless  branches. 
74 


IX 

The   Poet's   Narcissus 

EVERYBODY  knows  the  Poet's 
Narcissus,  which  is  sold  so  exten- 
sively in  the  London  streets  in  May, 
and  which  is,  I  believe,  especially 
cultivated  for  the  purpose.  Take  a  few 
fully  -  expanded  blossoms,  for  those  too 
young  will  only  disappoint  you,  and  look 
at  them  from  a  little  distance,  in  such  a 
position  that  the  reflected  may  be  helped 
by  a  little  transmitted  light.  First,  then, 
what  a  purity  and  softness  in  the  colour ! 
Not  a  veiny  white  as  you  are  now  looking 
at  it,  but  cool  and  snowy,  and  as  soft  as 
milk,  dimpled  everywhere  into  gradations 
by  the  exquisite  curvature  of  the  petals. 
These  are  large  and  bend  back,  to  give 
round  expanse  to  the  whiteness,  so  that 
the  effect  of  it  may  be  fully  felt.  The 
flower  is  fixed  upon  a  long  stout  tube, 
cylindrical  and  green.  And  mark  how  it 
spreads  from  the  end  of  this  as  from  a 
75 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

centre.  There  is  first  the  little  red-fringed 
cup,  yellow  within,  but  green  in  the  deep- 
est part  of  it.  And  see  how  this  continues 
the  tube  through  the  flower,  and  how  its 
torn  edges  seem  to  radiate,  and  how  its 
concavity  opposes  the  broad  convexity  of 
the  flower  face.  Then  how  beautifully  the 
petals  bend  back  from  it,  folding  upon 
themselves  in  those  delicious  curves,  so  as 
to  lay  marked  emphasis  upon  the  central 
line,  and  each  of  them  tipped  at  the  ex- 
tremity with  a  small  point  \mucr o\ 

But  wherein  lies  the  special  attractive- 
ness of  this  Narcissus  ?  Is  it  not  in  the 
exquisite  way  in  which  cold  and  heat  are 
brought  together  there,  the  former  of 
course  predominating ; — in  the  blending 
of  that  scarlet  fire  and  rich  delicious  fra- 
grance— all  fragrance,  as  I  have  said,  being 
indicative  of  warmth — with  the  snowy  cool- 
ness and  purity  ?  Such  union  of  opposite 
and  apparently  incompatible  beauties  is 
always  intensely  pleasurable.  We  experi- 
ence this  in  looking  at  the  snow  on  Alpine 
heights,  whilst  we  ourselves  lie  warm  in 
the  summer  heat  of  the  valley.  And  the 
red  of  the  Narcissus  is  specially  delightful, 
because  it  is  such  a  mere  streak,  and  is 
yet  so  brilliantly  contrasted  by  the  snow 
around  it,  and  is  so  well  supported  on  the 
76 


The  Poet's  Narcissus 

other  hand  by  the  yellow  and  green  within. 
We  care  greatly  more  for  a  little  red  on 
white  than  for  white  on  an  expanse  of 
redness. 

In  its  general  expression  the  Narcissus 
seems  a  type  of  maiden  purity  and  beauty, 
yet  warmed  by  a  love-breathing  fragrance. 
And  then  what  innocence  in  the  large  soft 
eye,  which  few  can  rival  amongst  the 
whole  tribe  of  flowers.  The  narrow  yet 
vivid  fringe  of  red,  so  clearly  seen  amidst 
the  whiteness,  suggests  again  the  idea  of 
purity  enshrining  passion — purity  with  a 
heart  which  can  kindle  into  fire.  The 
leaves  of  this  Narcissus  are  less  finished 
than  those  of  the  Daffodil,  so  that  the 
whole  attention  is  concentrated  upon  the 
flower.  Yet  their  tint  affords  a  good 
support  for  the  blossom.  And  we  may 
observe  that  the  Narcissus  is  one  of  those 
few  flowers  which  improve  with  age,  the 
petals  seeming  to  get  larger,  and  the  ex- 
pression of  the  eye  softer,  till  the  blossom 
absolutely  withers.  The  effect  of  the  eye 
is  best  seen  by  transmitted  light.  Put  a 
few  flowers  in  the  window,  and  look  at 
them  as  you  sit  in  the  room. 


77 


The  Snowjlake1 

(Leucojum  JEstlvurn) 

THE  Snowflake  is  closely  related  to 
the  Snowdrop,  and  is  very  simi- 
lar in  structure,  but  its  parts  are, 
on  the  whole,  less  delicately 
fashioned.  It  is,  in  fact,  the  Snowdrop 
on  a  larger  scale,  as  if  intended  for  more 
sensuous  effect,  with  greater  breadth  and 
fulness  therefore,  and  colours  more  de- 
cidedly contrasted.  Look  at  the  blossom, 
that  little  shower  of  bells,  perhaps  five  or 
six  or  more  in  number,  all  white  and  pure 
as  the  driven  snow,  and  bent  into  a  sort 
of  pyramidal  fall,  of  which  the  uppermost 
is  top.  Each  flower  is  a  broad  seal-like 
mass  of  white,  more  impressively  white 
than  in  the  Snowdrop.  And  we  can 
easily  perceive  the  reason.  In  the  first 

1  [The  better  title  would  be  "  The  Summer  Snowflake." 
— H.  N.  E.] 

78 


The  Snowflake 

place,  on  account  of  the  vivid  contrast 
of  the  leaves,  which  are  not  glaucous  as 
the  Snowdrop's,  but  are  bright  deep  green. 
In  the  next  place,  because  the  shape  of 
the  corolla  has  been  entirely  changed, 
made  shorter,  and  more  widely  bell-shaped, 
so  as  to  get  the  utmost  possible  expanse 
of  colour,  and  impress  us  as  a  globe  ,or 
seal  of  white,  just  green-touched  at  the 
edges  for  relief.  And  the  petals  are  now 
all  white  and  similar.  In  the  Snowdrop 
there  was  a  clear  distinction.  There, 
only  the  three  outermost  were  truly  white  ; 
and  these  were  longer,  and  were  of  softer 
and  lighter  make,  having  a  varied  outline 
of  indescribable  beauty,  as  graceful  as  that 
of  a  sea-shell.  The  three  innermost  and 
shorter  lay  within  the  others,  united  into 
a  stout  conical  cup,  the  most  visible  part 
of  which  was  green.  Now  in  the  Snow- 
flake,  these  innermost  petals,  which  are 
white,  as  we  have  already  stated,  are 
thrown  into  the  circumference  with  the 
others,  so  as  to  fill  it  out  to  the  utmost. 
And  hence  a  marked  change  in  the  in- 
terior of  the  flower.  The  stamens  have 
wider  space  afforded  them,  and  produce 
a  most  lovely  effect  in  connection  with 
the  delicate  veining  of  the  petals.  And 
if  you  invert  the  flower,  you  will  find  that 
79 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

the  unnatural  posture  spoils  its  beauty  less 
than  in  the  Snowdrop.  Now  this  shows 
a  form  less  specialised,  less  adapted,  that 
is,  to  one  particular  set  of  circumstances, 
and  so  perhaps  indicates  a  lower  kind  of 
beauty.  Evidently,  at  any  rate,  this  sen- 
suous gain  of  the  Snowflake  in  the  broad 
contrast  of  green  and  white  has  necessi- 
tated a  certain  loss.  The  delicacy  of 
outline  in  the  corolla  of  the  Snowdrop  is 
gone,  to  be  replaced  by  a  simple  bell- 
shape,  only  varied  near  the  margin  where 
the  petal-tips  curve  outwards.  But  if  the 
plant  has  lost  in  delicacy,  it  has  gained  in 
other  ways.  The  whole  cast  of  it  strikes 
us  as  pre-eminently  fair  and  noble.  We 
feel  this  especially  in  the  tallness  of  the 
stems  and  leaves,  which  show  a  most 
graceful  example  of  well-proportioned 
height ;  and,  also,  in  the  dropping  of  the 
large  snowy  flowers,  in  which  there  is  less 
of  humility  than  of  the  subdued  yet  digni- 
fied bearing  of  some  tall  and  beautiful 
princess  of  olden  days  when  standing  in 
the  presence  of  a  king. 

Here  sensuousness,  then,  has  a  high 
imaginative  value.  It  is  in  great  part  the 
very  purity  of  the  white  which  makes  the 
plant  so  noble.  The  form  of  the  pedicels 
is,  in  the  main,  like  what  we  have  in  the 
80 


The  Snowflake 

Snowdrop,  but  the  bend  is  less  absolutely 
determined.  There  is  a  tendency  to  relax 
into  something  of  that  arching  curve,  which 
in  the  Snowdrop  but  evinces  weakness. 
Yet  how  beautiful  do  we  find  it  here  ;  the 
uppermost  pedicel  straight  and  more  sud- 
den in  the  bend,  the  lower  ones  starting 
off  of  necessity  at  sharper  angles,  and 
arching  more  and  more  perceptibly  as  we 
descend  to  the  lowermost.  The  spathe 
has  but  little  of  the  Snowdrop  curve,  but 
the  pedicels  look  stiff  and  weak  if  it  is  cut 
away.  And  now  we  see  the  force  of  the 
bell-shape  of  the  corolla,  for  the  petals  of 
the  Snowdrop  would  be  far  too  lengthy. 
So  that  the  corolla  has  been  shortened,  in 
the  first  place,  to  get  a  fuller  and  rounder 
mass  of  colour,  and  we  now  find  besides 
that  the  shortening  of  both  corolla  and 
spathe  is  equally  necessary  to  fit  them 
for  the  height  to  which  they  have  been 
elevated. 

We  have  already  noticed  the  deep  green 
colour  of  the  leaves.  These  are  very  long, 
and  in  their  upper  portion  look  singularly 
flat  and  strap-like,  with  a  broad  round 
point  which  seems  cut  off  abruptly,  nay, 
is  absolutely  notched  in  the  middle.  And 
this  flatness  and  bluntness  are  taken,  as 
usual,  up  by  other  parts  of  the  plant.  The 
81  F 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

stalk  on  which  the  flowers  are  mounted 
is  not  round,  as  we  saw  it  in  the  Snow- 
drop, for  roundness  would  be  unimpressive 
with  such  length.  Broadly  two-edged,  we 
might  almost  say  triangular,  it  contracts 
below  the  spathe  into  a  slender  wrist-like 
joint.  But  still  it  needs  emphasis  to 
make  it  sufficiently  effective.  And  con- 
sequently the  stem  as  it  ascends  is  twisted, 
to  prevent  the  flat  side  from  falling  too 
dead  upon  the  eye.  So  the  edges,  ridged 
with  their  slight  shallow  teeth,  cut  upon 
us  most  keenly  and  decidedly,  and  the  flat- 
ness rises  up  to  terminate  in  the  blunt 
flat-sided  spathe,  which  swells  out  again 
above  the  joint,  almost  as  might  a  human 
limb.  Find  a  Snowflake  stem  which  has 
not  this  twist  and  note  the  difference. 
Lastly,  this  twisting  of  the  stem  gives  it 
the  tapering  look  that  makes  its  great 
length  seem  so  well  proportioned.  View 
the  stem  in  certain  aspects,  more  especi- 
ally, I  think,  from  behind,  and  this  will 
be  seen  most  beautifully.  Then  take  the 
stem  and  go  round  it,  and  you  will  find 
that  the  tapering  is  less  than  it  had  seemed, 
because  the  effect  was  partly  produced  by 
the  twist,  as  we  have  already  said. 


82 


XI 

The    White   Lily 

BEN  JONSON  calls  the  White  Lily 
"the  plant  and  flower  of  light." 
Why?  Because  of  its  whiteness, 
says  Leigh  Hunt,  in  his  "  Imagina- 
tion and  Fancy";  also  because  "there  is 
a  golden  dawn  issuing  out  of  the  White 
Lily  in  the  rich  yellow  of  the  stamens." 
Yes,  but  is  not  Johnson  also  thinking  of 
that  silvery  glistening  of  the  petals,  which 
makes  them  seem  almost  to  shine  with  a 
light  of  their  own  ?  No  darkening  shade, 
no  trace  of  richer  tinting  —  those  large 
queenly  flowers  seem  wholly  compact  of  a 
lustrous,  dazzling  whiteness,  which  gains 
warmth  from  the  stamens  with  their  rich 
orange  glow.  And  all  the  rest  of  the  plant 
is  in  perfect  harmony  with  the  flowers. 
The  foliage,  remarkably  little  stained  or 
insect  bitten,  has  even  in  June  the  glossy, 
vivid  green  which  we  deem  peculiar  to  the 
spring,  and  often  through  all  the  time  of 
83 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

flowering  it  is  bespotted  here  and  there 
with  little  scarlet  lady-birds,  whose  bright 
tints  add  most  conspicuously  to  the  beauty 
of  the  plant,  and  seem  absolutely  to  belong 
to  it.  I  do  not  know  what  they  are  doing 
there, — probably  in  search  of  insects  or 
of  other  food, — but  they  furnish  in  their 
scarlet  and  black  the  very  colour  that  is 
needed  to  set  off  the  green  by  contrast. 
The  plant  is  almost  incomplete  without 
them.  I  wonder  if  they  are  attached  to 
it  in  its  native  country. 


XII 

The  Daffodil 

IN  the  Snowdrop,  Snowflake,  and  many 
similar  plants,  the  spathe  or  sheath 
out  of  which  the  flower  arises  has 
a  fresh  leafy  aspect,  and  shows  no 
symptom  of  decay  till  the  plant  has  shed 
its  blossom.  Again,  in  the  Calla,  or 
Arum  Lily  of  the  greenhouses,  and  our 
own  native  Cuckoo- Pint  (Arum  macula- 
turn),  this  spathe  is  so  largely  developed 
as  to  constitute  the  most  striking  beauty 
of  the  flower.  Now  there  are  certain 
kinds  of  Narcissus,  as  the  Daffodil  and 
Poet's  Narcissus  (popularly  called  "  Phea- 
sant's Eye  "),  which  seem  meant  to  attract 
us  by  an  especial  freshness.  In  the 
Daffodil,  for  instance,  the  leaves  and 
stem  are  of  a  full  glaucous  green,  a 
colour  not  only  cool  and  refreshing  in 
itself,  but  strongly  suggestive  of  water, 
the  most  apparent  source  of  freshness, 
and  constituting  a  most  delicious  ground- 
85 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

work  for  the  bright,  lively  yellow  of  the 
blossoms.  Now  what  sort  of  spathe  would 
be  likely  to  contribute  best  to  this  re- 
markable effect  of  the  flower  ?  Should  the 
colours  be  unusually  striking,  or  the  size 
increased,  or  what  ?  Strange  to  say,  in 
both  Daffodil  and  Pheasant's  Eye  we  find 
the  spathe  dry  and  withered,  shrivelled 
up  like  a  bit  of  thin  brown  paper,  and 
clinging  round  the  base  of  the  flower.  We 
cannot  overlook  it,  and  most  assuredly 
we  were  never  meant  to  do  so.  Nothing 
could  have  been  more  beautifully  ordered 
than  this  contrast,  there  being  just  suffi- 
cient suggestion  of  the  dead,  the  artificial, 
to  make  us  appreciate  more  fully  that 
abounding  freshness  and  life.  And  we 
are  not  impressed  as  by  any  ordinary 
form  of  decay.  Imagine  the  spathe  un- 
withered,  as  we  elsewhere  often  find  it, 
and  see  what  we  should  lose.1  Now 
withering  is  generally  meant  to  remind 
us  of  the  perishableness  and  transitory 
nature  of  things  ;  but  we  do  occasionally 
see  it,  as  in  the  present  instance,  em- 
ployed in  one  of  its  least  attractive 
aspects — to  intensify  the  feeling  of  fresh- 
ness by  the  contrast.  For  other  illustra- 

1  A  withered  spathe  is  by  no  means  peculiar  to  these 
plants,  but  its  object  in  them  is  remarkably  clear. 
86 


The  Daffodil 

tions  of  this,  look  at  the  young  spring 
leaves  when  rising  in  the  ditches  among 
last  year's  withered  stalks,  or  at  the  green 
shoot  as  it  bursts  through  the  dry  coat- 
ing of  a  bulb,  like  that  of  the  Crocus,  or 
of  some  Irises  and  onions. 

I  said  that  the  Daffodil  leaves,  espe- 
cially in  their  colour,  are  strongly  sug- 
gestive of  water,  the  source  and  type  of 
coolness  and  freshness.  But  these  leaves 
are  not  the  colour  of  ordinary  water,  nor 
yet  do  they  recall  it  in  its  coolest  possible 
tones.  What  is  the  reason  of  this?  In 
the  first  place,  it  may  be  answered  that 
the  blue-green  of  the  leaf  is  one  of  the 
most  beautiful  of  all  the  characteristic  cool 
tones  that  water  is  capable  of  assuming. 
But  there  is  a  second  and  still  more  im- 
portant reason.  The  blue-green  colour 
of  water  is  that  in  which  leaves  are  best 
capable  of  imitating  it  to  advantage. 
The  colourless  tones  of  water  are  less 
beautiful,  and  are  not  easily  made  com- 
patible with  any  but  mineral  forms  of 
structure.  It  is  true  that  we  find  clear 
beads  on  the  leaves  of  the  Ice-plant,  and 
that  there  is  brilliancy  in  the  eye  of 
animals.  But  these  are  rare  instances, 
and  even  here  the  imitation  is  of  water  in 
the  solid  form.  Glaucous  green,  on  the 
87 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

contrary,  is  just  the  very  tint  which  water 
possesses  characteristically  in  common  with 
the  vegetable  world,  and  has  the  further 
advantage  of  being  cool  and  shadowy  to 
the  utmost  degree  that  is  compatible  with 
the  appearance  of  an  active  vegetable  life. 
And  let  it  be  observed  that  there  are 
other  points  in  the  Daffodil  which  contri- 
bute to  assist  the  suggestion  we  have 
indicated,  such  as  the  softness  and  juici- 
ness of  its  textures,  and  the  smooth, 
uniform,  striped  appearance  which  arises 
from  the  straightness  of  its  long  narrow 
leaves.1  All  these  combine  to  give  us 
a  sort  of  natural  symbolism.  We  may 
almost  say  that  these  leaves  are  sym- 
bolical of  water,  representing  as  they  do 
its  delicious  coolness,  its  smooth  unifor- 
mity of  surface,  and  the  power  which  it 
has  of  becoming  deep  blue-green. 

Before  proceeding  further,  let  us  try  to 
get  at  the  exact  meaning  of  the  term 
freshness.  Freshness  then  is  simply  life- 
fulness,  or  the  outward  expression  or 
manifestation  of  activity  or  vital  power. 

1  This  striped  appearance  will  be  easily  understood  if 
we  look  at  a  cluster  of  Daffodils  a  little  distance  away 
from  us.  Near  at  hand  the  same  effect  is  carried  out  by 
the  parallel  veining,  and  other  characteristics  I  have 
mentioned.  The  imagination  blends  both  effects  to- 
gether when  we  form  our  conception  of  the  plant. 
88 


The  Daffodil 

Consequently  whatever  seems  immedi- 
ately to  restore  lost  strength  we  call 
refreshing.  Thus  we  speak  of  a  giant 
refreshed  with  wine,  or  of  a  man  who 
eats  and  is  refreshed.  Still  the  term  is 
most  generally  associated  with  the  idea 
of  cold ;  and  as  cold  depresses  vitality, 
whilst  heat  is  necessary  to  maintain  it, 
this  may  at  first  sight  seem  strange. 
But  we  only  call  a  cool  breeze  more 
refreshing  than  a  warm  one  because  the 
former  braces  and  exhilarates,  whilst  the 
latter  is  more  apt  to  depress  us.  At 
all  times  warmth,  and  especially  the 
warmth  of  a  fire,  seems  to  give  increase 
of  comfort  rather  than  of  power  and 
disposition  for  bodily  exertion.  If  we 
were  frozen  that  heat  might  restore  us 
to  life,  but  not  to  an  active  life ;  we 
should  feel  for  a  time  that  our  strength 
and  energy  were  gone.  And  practically 
we  find  it  unsafe  to  approach  a  fire 
when  we  are  very  cold  ;  the  restoration 
of  warmth  by  such  means  is  always 
painful,  and  it  would  be  certain  destruc- 
tion to  a  frozen  limb. 

Now    to    apply    this    definition.      The 

freshest-looking   plants    are   those    which 

have  the  most  marked  external  signs  of 

active   and   energetic   life.      Much    mois- 

89 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

ture,  with  a  certain  proportion  of  light 
and  warmth,  are  the  ordinary  conditions 
of  this,  and  hence  comes  the  freshness 
of  our  own  spring  season,  and  of  the 
colder  temperate  zone  as  a  whole,  as 
well  as  that  of  the  tropics  after  the 
falling  of  those  heavy  rains  which  are 
necessary  to  maintain  the  balance  against 
a  sun  of  such  tremendous  power.  Fresh- 
ness is  generally  most  marked  where 
vital  activity  is  strongest — viz.,  in  soft, 
succulent,  fast-growing  tissues  filled  with 
abundant  sap,  and  principally,  therefore, 
in  the  younger  parts  of  vegetables,  after 
these  have  been  sufficiently  sunned  to 
give  them  a  look  of  bright  and  joyous 
health.  Wrinkled,  stiff-leaved,  spinous, 
or  woody  plants,  on  the  other  hand,  are 
characteristic  of  hot  dry  places,  and  we 
feel  them  to  be  but  half  alive,  however 
rapidly  they  grow.  Indeed,  as  a  rule, 
they  do  not  grow  rapidly.  Evergreens 
are  remarkably  slow  : l  the  common  Box 
is  a  very  type  of  slowness,  whence  its 
frequent  use  in  our  older  gardens  for 
edgings. 

Now   freshness   is    displayed    by   each 

1  [Not  all.  Many  conifers  grow  very  rapidly.  The 
Wellingtonia  will  often  gain  two  feet  in  height  for  many 
years  together. — H.  N.  E.] 

90 


The  Daffodil 

different  part  of  a  plant  after  its  own 
peculiar  manner.  Leaves,  for  instance, 
have  but  little  capability  for  expressing 
sun-power.  They  may  be  regarded  as 
the  shady  portion  of  the  plant ;  their 
very  place  is  to  be  cool,  a  ground  upon 
which  to  display  the  blossoms.  They 
rarely  assume  warm  tints,  except  in  the 
autumnal  withering  of  the  trees — per- 
haps an  acknowledgment  that  too  much 
colour  is  incompatible  with  the  condi- 
tion of  their  healthy  existence.  But 
green,  the  characteristic  leaf -tint,  re- 
quires little  sun  for  its  development.  It 
is  the  tint  of  mosses,  ferns,  and  the 
least  organised  plants  in  general,  of  the 
early  spring,  and  of  the  cooler  temperate 
zone.  And  the  green  parts  of  plants  are 
generally  the  first  to  be  seen,  the  flowers 
requiring  more  sun  -  power  to  awaken 
them. 

The  flower  is  the  light  of  a  plant,  just 
as  leaves  may  be  considered  as  its  shade. 
This  light  may  be  a  blue  and  cool  one; 
it  may  even  be  found,  as  in  some  Pansies, 
nearly  approaching  blackness  ;  but  still  it 
has  a  vividness,  a  stimulating  power,  far 
exceeding  that  of  the  green,  which  is  the 
most  restful  tint  we  know,  and  it  gene- 
rally expresses  sun  -  force  in  responsive 
91 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

vividness  of  hue,  in  splendour  and  glow 
of  colour,  in  that  higher  and  more  glori- 
ous force  of  freshness  which  is  too  much 
for  the  leaves  to  bear.1  Green  petals 
we  seldom  like  to  see.  They  betoken  a 
comparatively  low  type,  and  are  often 
associated  with  poisonous  and  suspicious 
qualities,  especially  when  found  amongst 
the  more  highly  developed  flowers.  The 
beauty  we  expect  of  petals  is  to  be  ex- 
pressed in  brighter  tones,  dull  tones  like 
black  or  brown  being  extremely  rare. 

We  shall  now  be  better  able  to  under- 
stand the  freshness  of  the  Daffodil.  It 
is  a  plant  which  affords  a  most  beautiful 
contrast,  a  cool,  watery  sheet  of  leaves, 
with  bright  warm  flowers,  yellow  and 
orange,  dancing  over  the  leaves  like 
meteors  over  a  marsh.  The  leaves  look 
full  of  watery  sap,  which  is  the  life-blood 
of  plants,  and  prime  source  of  all  their 
freshness,  just  as  the  tissues  of  a  healthy 
child  look  plump  and  rosy  from  the  warm 
blood  circulating  within.  And  this  helps 
the  leaves  in  symbolising  water  in  the 
way  which  has  been  already  partially  ex- 

1  It  is  well  to  remind  the  unscientific  reader  that  the 
whole  fruit  and  flower  of  a  plant  are  essentially  nothing 
but  an  assemblage  of  leaves  undergoing  a  higher  de- 
velopment. 

92 


The  Daftodil 

plained.  In  the  first  place,  they  in  some 
degree  represent  water,  and  make  upon 
us  to  some  extent  the  cool  delicious  im- 
pression of  actual  water ;  and,  in  the 
second  place,  they  make  us  feel  instinc- 
tively, as  by  the  signs  of  some  universal 
language,  that  water  is  not  far  distant. 
We  are  led  to  think  of  it  in  a  dim,  ideal 
way,  not  as  it  actually  exists,  with  all 
sorts  of  inconveniences,  as  of  mud  and 
muddy  borders,  but  in  its  purity  and  life- 
giving  freshness.  Something  of  the  same 
expression,  though  in  a  less  degree,  may 
be  found  in  the  leaves  of  Corydalis  bulbosa, 
or  in  those  of  the  common  Columbine. 


93 


PART   II 
GARDENS 


Faults    in    Gardening 

THE  pleasure  we  receive  from 
flowers  may  be  divided  into  sen- 
suous and  non-sensuous.  There 
is  a  certain  enjoyment  felt  in  rich- 
ness and  variety  of  colour,  in  shape  and 
smell,  in  juiciness,  wiriness,  softness,  hard- 
ness, sharpness — looking  at  these  qualities 
for  their  own  sake  merely.  The  scent  of 
the  Rose  is  delicious,  even  on  a  hand- 
kerchief, and  altogether  independently  of 
its  connection  with  the  flower ;  and  the 
blue  of  the  Larkspur  would  charm  us  on 
the  painter's  palette.  But  so  far  we  please 
nothing  but  the  sense,  we  stop  at  the  out- 
side ;  the  plant  is  no  more  than  a  bundle 
of  qualities.  For  true  appreciation  we 
must  advance  beyond  this,  and  think  of 
the  plant  as  a  living  being  —  a  friend 
whom  we  may  love,  and  whose  character 
must  be  intimately  known.  We  shall 
wish  to  learn  all  we  can  of  it,  the  time  of 
97  G 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

its  appearance  and  flowering,  what  it  does 
with  itself  in  the  winter,  whether  drop- 
ping its  leaves  and  standing  bare-branched 
like  a  tree  or  shrub,  or  disappearing  be- 
neath the  ground  like  a  Snowdrop  or  Hya- 
cinth, or  facing  the  cold  with  a  tuft  of 
leaves  lying  close  upon  the  earth  like  a 
Foxglove.  What  sort  of  locality  does  it 
love — field,  rock,  or  marsh?  How  does 
it  treat  other  plants  when  it  encounters 
them  ?  Does  it  twine  round  them  like  a 
Convolvulus,  creep  over  them  like  many 
trailing  plants,  or  bear  itself  erect  like  the 
Buttercup?  How  does  it  wither?  shab- 
bily and  untidily  like  the  Pansy,  or  in  the 
neat,  decorous  mode  of  the  Gentianella? 
These  and  all  other  facts  which  we  can 
learn  about  a  plant  have  a  value  in  an 
imaginative  point  of  view ;  they  tell  us 
something  about  it,  and  so  enable  us  to 
understand  it,  to  read  its  true  meaning 
and  character.  And  we  find  that  the  sen- 
suous qualities  have  more  than  a  sensuous 
value,  for  the  imagination  discovers  that 
they  are  but  a  symbolic  language,  which 
we  must  receive  as  exponent  of  the  hidden 
nature  of  a  flower,  just  as  the  features  of 
the  human  countenance  are  interpreters 
of  the  mind  within. 

Now  the   faults   of  gardening,   against 
98 


Faults  in  Gardening 

which  my  present  paper  is  directed,  all 
centre  in  this  one  thing  —  the  constant 
subjection  of  the  imaginative,  or  higher, 
to  the  sensuous,  or  lower,  element  of 
flower  beauty.  We  will  trace  this,  first, 
in  the  general  arrangement  of  gardens 
and  of  flowers  in  relation  to  each  other, 
and  afterwards  in  the  case  of  their  in- 
dividual culture.  To  begin,  then,  we  find 
flower-beds  habitually  considered  too  much 
as  mere  masses  of  colour,  instead  of  as  an 
assemblage  of  living  beings.  The  only 
thought  is  to  delight  the  eye  by  the  ut- 
most possible  splendour.  When  we  walk 
in  our  public  gardens  everything  seems 
tending  to  distract  the  attention  from 
the  separate  plants  and  to  make  us  look 
at  them  only  with  regard  to  their  united 
effect.  And  this  universal  brilliancy,  this 
striking  effect  of  the  masses,  is  the  ac- 
knowledged chief  aim  of  the  cultivator. 
Speaking  of  the  older  gardens,  Mr.  C. 
Mclntosh  says  :  "No  doubt  that  ten  out  of 
every  twelve  sorts  of  annuals  thus  grown 
were  useless  trash,  weedy  in  appearance, 
and  producing  none  of  those  brilliant 
effects  for  which  our  modern  flower  gar- 
dens are  so  conspicuous ;  and  the  same 
may  be  said  of  the  perennial  plants  exist- 
ing in  those  days.  .  .  .  Gardeners  of  the 
99 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

days  to  which  we  refer  had  little  idea  of 
producing  pleasing  and  agreeable  effects 
by  means  of  masses  of  colour  either  har- 
moniously or  contrastedly  arranged.  Their 
great  aim  was  to  possess  a  collection  of 
species  and  genera,  without  much  regard 
to  the  beauty  of  individuals,  or  the  effect 
which  they  were  capable  of  producing." 
("Book  of  the  Garden,"  vol.  ii.  p.  815.) 
Now  I  quite  admit  that  the  older  system 
may  have  been  a  little  at  fault  in  the 
respects  here  mentioned,  but  we  of  the 
present  day  are  running  to  exactly  the 
opposite  extreme.  And  whilst  the  old 
faults  were  of  a  purely  negative  kind, 
which  did  little  if  any  mischief,  the  faults 
of  our  modern  system  are  eminently  cal- 
culated to  vitiate  the  public  taste. 

Has  any  of  our  readers,  gifted  with  real 
love  for  flowers,  ever  walked  through  one 
of  those  older  gardens,  and  observed  the 
wide  difference  in  its  effect?  I  am  not 
here  speaking  necessarily  of  the  grounds 
of  a  mansion,  but  merely  of  such  a  garden 
as  might  often  be  found,  some  twenty 
years  ago,  attached  to  any  good-sized 
house  in  a  country  town  or  village.  Or 
even  a  little  cottage  plot  of  the  kind  so 
beautifully  described  by  Clare  will,  to 
some  extent,  illustrate  my  meaning : — 

100 


Faults  in  Gardening 

"  And  where  the  marjoram  once,  and  sage  and  rue, 
And  balm  and  mint,  with  curled-leaf  parsley  grew, 
And  double  marigolds,  and  silver  thyme, 
And  pumpkins  'neath  the  window  used  to  climb ; 
And  where  I  often,  when  a  child,  for  hours 
Tried  through  the  pales  to  get  the  tempting  flowers  ; 
As  lady's  laces,  everlasting  peas, 
True-love  lies  bleeding,  with  the  hearts  at  ease ; 
And  golden  rods,  and  tansy  running  high, 
That  o'er  the  pale-top  smiled  on  passer-by ; 
Flowers  in  my  time  which  every  one  would  praise, 
Though  thrown   like   weeds   from   gardens   nowa- 
days." 

There  might  be,  as  Mr.  Mclntosh  says, 
but  little  attempt  at  colour  grouping,  or  at 
the  production  of  effect  by  masses  in  a 
narrow  sense.  But  was  there  any  want 
of  beauty  there?  And  did  you  not  feel, 
in  looking  at  those  flowers,  how  each 
made  you  love  it  as  a  friend — the  Pinks 
and  Sweet-Williams,  the  Everlasting  Peas, 
Valerian,  Day  Lily,  Jacob's  Ladder,  and  a 
host  of  others?  And  did  you  not  notice 
how  ever  and  again  you  fell  upon  some 
quaint,  strange  plant  which  has  been  ex- 
pelled from  the  modern  border,  which 
seemed  to  touch  your  inmost  soul,  and  to 
fill  the  mind,  especially  if  in  childhood, 
with  a  sense  of  wonder  and  mysterious 
awe  ?  What  was  that  plant  ?  Could  not 
anybody  tell  its  name,  and  where  it  came 
from,  and  all  else  about  it,  for  it  must 

101 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

surely  have  an  eventful  history?  And 
with  curiosity  rather  stimulated  than  satis- 
fied by  the  scanty  knowledge  you  could 
glean,  you  fell  back  upon  the  imagination, 
which  set  it  down  as  an  actor  in  some 
strange  and  awful  tale,  as  that  of  a  young 
man  who  gathered  some  unknown  wild 
flowers  that  attracted  him,  and  who,  to- 
gether with  his  betrothed,  was  poisoned 
by  their  touch.  Feelings  of  this  sort 
were  strongly  awakened  in  my  mind  in 
childhood  by  such  plants  as  Caper  Spurge, 
Henbane,  Rue,  and  other  more  beautiful 
species,  as  the  Dog's-Tooth  Violet,  with  its 
spotted  leaves,  the  common  Nigella,  and 
the  pink  Marsh-Mallow  of  the  fields. 

Want  of  general  effect !  Is  there  none 
in  those  cottage  gardens,  where  the  Nas- 
turtiums twine  lovingly  all  the  summer 
amongst  Jasmine,  Clematis,  and  thickly 
trellised  Rose — where  the  towering  splen- 
dour of  the  Hollyhocks  is  confronted  by 
the  broad  discs  of  the  Sunflower,  and 
where  the  huge  leaves,  herbs,  and  fruit- 
trees  of  the  kitchen  garden  run  close  up 
on  or  intermix  with  the  border  flowers, 
amongst  which  we  may  meet  at  any  time 
with  some  new  or  long  -  absent  friend  ? 
Here  are  no  masses  of  colour  in  the 
modern  sense  ;  but  do  you  ever  feel  the 


IO2 


Faults  in  Gardening 

want  of  them  ?  Or  can  you  turn  from 
these  simple  plots,  unstudied  for  effect, 
to  the  showy,  unvaried  brilliancy  of  the 
modern  border,  and  find  that  you  miss 
nothing  there?  Do  not  the  plants  seem 
comparatively  wanting  in  interest  ?  Do 
they  not  seem  to  be  individually  less  dear, 
to  hold  you  with  a  lighter  grasp?  Now 
what  can  be  the  reason  of  this  ?  The  old 
gardeners,  we  are  told,  thought  little  of 
beauty,  and  chiefly  of  genera  and  species. 
Why,  then,  should  the  poet  find  that,  with 
all  its  faults,  the  old  garden  stirs  him  in 
those  depths  which  the  modern  one  can 
seldom  reach?  This  defect  is  far  less 
conspicuous  in  the  larger  hothouses  and 
greenhouses,  and  I  am  convinced  that  it 
depends  almost  wholly  on  false  principles 
of  arrangement.  We  should  feel  a  great 
difference  if  we  saw  the  plants  grow  wild. 
I  will  give  an  illustration  of  this.  Every- 
body knows  the  little  blue  annual  Lobelia. 
It  is  a  pretty  flower ;  but,  as  the  gardeners 
place  it  in  their  show-beds,  it  seems  as 
cold  and  unlovable  as  if  it  was  wrought 
out  of  steel.  Yet  should  we  ever  think 
it  so  if  we  found  it  rising  stem  by  stem 
amongst  the  looser  grass,  in  such  meadows 
as  the  Harebell,  Milkwort,  or  Eyebright 
(Eupkrasia)  will  often  enter,  or  perhaps  in 
103 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

closer  tufts  on  open  banks  of  gravel  ?  I 
have  chosen  localities  altogether  imagi- 
nary, and  am,  of  course,  well  aware  that 
the  plant's  colours  are  too  bright  to  asso- 
ciate easily  with  the  tints  of  our  native 
flowers. 

But  is  it  not  right  in  a  public  garden  to 
seek  after  brilliant  display?  Is  not  that 
just  the  very  place  for  it?  Yes,  if  the 
brilliancy  be  of  a  proper  kind.  The  fault 
I  attack  lies  in  concentrating  our  attention 
too  much  upon  effects  of  one  special  class, 
produced  by  the  bright  colours  of  a 
crowded  assemblage  of  plants,  all  prim, 
compact,  and  of  a  low  habit  of  growth. 
When  we  turn  from  these  show-beds,  how 
often  we  find  there  are  no  other  flowers 
in  the  garden  which  possess  any  lively 
interest !  There  are  sure  to  be  evergreens 
in  abundance,  but  summer  is  no  time  for 
them.  If  we  followed  Nature,  we  should 
scorn  so  much  formal  neatness,  spreading 
often  over  so  large  a  space  of  ground,  and 
should  cultivate  a  more  noble  splendour, 
with  proper  variety  and  repose.  The 
plants  would  then  be  more  intermixed,  as 
we  see  them  in  the  rustic  garden,  and  we 
should  love  them  as  we  love  them  there. 
Beds  of  the  present  sort,  when  permitted 
at  all,  would  then  lead  off  into  surrounding 
104 


Faults  in  Gardening 

beds  less  uniformly  gay,  but  stocked  with 
a  sufficiency  of  handsome  perennials  and 
flowering  shrubs ;  and  every  here  and 
there  would  be  some  curious  plants  like 
Mullein,  Sunflower,  Acanthus,  Southern- 
wood, or  perhaps  some  giant  Umbellifer, 
or  many  other  species  with  lovely  blos- 
soms, but  which  are  of  the  class  now 
stigmatised  as  weedy.  The  choice,  of 
course,  would  vary  with  the  character  of 
the  bed.  Everything  of  this  kind,  how- 
ever, our  taste  is  fast  driving  from  us. 
We  banish  whatever  is  not  striking  in 
colour  and  will  not  conform  to  our  rule. 
On  our  side  beds,  where  shrubs  are  inter- 
mixed, we  look  at  the  neat,  compact 
Thujas  and  Junipers,  the  Scarlet  Gera- 
niums and  Blue  Lobelias,  with  the  purple 
foliage  of  the  Perilla,  amongst  which  the 
chance  appearances  of  a  Deadly  Night- 
shade or  a  Physalis  (Winter  Cherry) 
would  seem  like  water  in  a  desert.  What 
gardens  ought  to  be  is  perhaps  best  seen 
in  those  which  are  specially  devoted  to 
botanical  purposes. 

But  worst  of  all  is  the  neglect  of  the 
early  spring  plants.  Every  one  begins 
to  value  flowers  in  spring ;  we  notice 
them  more  particularly  from  their  being 
so  few,  and  they  cheer  us  by  their  con- 
105 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

trast  with  the  winter,  and  by  that  cool, 
delicious  freshness  which  no  other  season 
can  bestow.  There  arises,  then,  even  for 
the  world-worn  man,  a  sort  of  second 
childhood — the  film  is  half  fallen  from  his 
eyes ;  but  where  will  he  see  those  flowers 
which,  if  any  can,  might  win  him  back  to 
Nature?  Anemone,  Dog's-Tooth  Violet, 
Pasque  Flower,  Yellow  Adonis,  Hepatica, 
Gentianella,  and  the  lesser  Fritillaries — 
what  beauty  can  be  matched  with  theirs  ? 
Yet  how  rarely  do  they  seem  to  come 
before  us  now ! 

My  chief  accusation  then  is,  that  gar- 
deners are  teaching  us  to  think  too  little 
about  the  plants  individually,  and  to  look 
at  them  chiefly  as  an  assemblage  of  beau- 
tiful colours.  It  is  difficult  in  those 
blooming  masses  to  separate  one  from 
another ;  all  produce  so  much  the  same 
sort  of  impression.  The  consequence  is, 
people  see  the  flowers  on  the  beds  with- 
out caring  to  know  anything  about  them, 
or  even  to  ask  their  names.  It  was 
different  in  the  older  gardens,  because 
there  was  just  variety  there,  the  plants 
strongly  contrasted  with  each  other,  and 
we  were  ever  passing  from  the  beautiful 
to  the  curious.  Now  we  get  little  of 
quaintness  or  mystery,  or  of  the  strange, 
106 


Faults  in  Gardening 

delicious  thought  of  being  lost  and  em- 
bosomed in  a  tall,  rich  wood  of  flowers. 
All  is  clear,  definite,  and  classical — the 
work  of  a  too  narrow  and  exclusive 
taste,  as  was  that  of  Pope  and  other 
writers  of  his  school.1  Compare  this 
with  the  work  of  Nature  when  she  pro- 
duces a  striking  effect,  as  in  the  South 
American  forests.  The  magnificence  of 
these  is  too  much  for  a  poetic  mind.  It 
is  something  absolutely  bewildering  and 
embarrassing,  and  yet  just  a  dim  hint  of 
what  God  could  show  us  if  He  opened 
the  full  treasures  of  His  splendour;  but 
here  there  is  endless  variety,  the  most 
diverse  forms  of  beauty  side  by  side  with 
every  description  of  strange,  uncouth, 
enormous  growth  —  Cactus,  Palm,  and 
Plantain — bound  together  with  rope-like 
Lianas,  and  Orchids  everywhere  bursting 
out  upon  the  trees.  Consequently  the 
effect  is  right ;  we  are  not  tempted  to 

1  By  far  the  most  natural  mode  of  arrangement  is  that 
which  permits  a  greater  or  less  intermixture  of  fruit-trees, 
vegetables,  and  flowers.  We  freely  grant  that  this  inter- 
mixture will  not  always  be  possible,  but  we  are  convinced 
that  it  might  generally  be  effected  to  a  much  greater 
extent  than  at  present.  Apple-trees,  for  instance,  might 
easily  be  planted  on  many  of  our  lawns  and  flower-beds. 
But,  unfortunately,  our  private  gardens  in  all  respects  too 
closely  imitate  the  public  ones.  Some  of  the  faults  we 
are  discussing  are  comparatively  venial  in  the  latter, 
whilst  in  the  former  they  are  highly  mischievous. 
107 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

lose  sight  of  the  individuals  in  the  masses, 
though  bewildered  by  the  multitude  of 
their  claims.  And  there  is  the  same 
variety  in  some  of  the  Rhododendron- 
covered  uplands  of  Switzerland,  whose 
effect  in  its  kind  more  nearly  resembles 
what  our  gardeners  desire. 

This  constant  revelling  in  a  blaze  of 
colour,  without  any  proper  relief,  begets 
an  indifference  to  the  simple  wild  flowers, 
which  seem  tame  and  insipid  to  eyes  that 
have  been  injured  by  excessive  stimulus. 
Now  none  can  have  a  healthy  love  for 
flowers  unless  he  loves  the  wild  ones. 
In  a  garden  the  plants  are  kept  in  well- 
behaved  restraint,  but  we  must  watch 
their  ways  when  they  are  wholly  free, 
when  each  can  choose  the  home  it  fancies 
best,  and  root  and  wrestle  for  existence 
there,  disposing  of  its  flowers  and  branches 
with  the  utmost  possible  carelessness  of 
all  other  interests  than  its  own,  yet  some- 
how producing  an  effect  of  almost  perfect 
harmony  and  peace.  And  under  no  cir- 
cumstances need  our  wild  flowers  seem 
insipid  to  eyes  that  are  rightly  trained. 
I  had  a  Foxglove  on  the  table  last 
summer  whose  bells  were  dropping,  when 
there  came  in  a  little  bunch  of  Geraniums 
and  other  greenhouse  plants.  My  first 
108 


Faults  in  Gardening 

thought  was,  "  How  the  poor  Foxglove 
is  killed  by  the  comparison ! "  But  even 
as  I  said  it  there  appeared  such  delicacy 
of  tinting  in  the  spotted  markings  within 
the  bells,  that  the  Geraniums  for  a  time 
shrank  back  abashed. 

And  the  false  treatment  of  gardeners, 
old  and  new,  being  here  alike  in  fault, 
has  actually  resulted  in  making  some 
plants  unpopular.  We  often  hear  people 
complaining  of  the  Tulip  as  a  stiff,  un- 
gainly flower ;  but  it  only  looks  so  when 
cultivated  quite  out  of  its  natural  appear- 
ance, and  planted  in  formal  rows  with 
stems  as  stiff  as  ramrods.  Lay  aside  the 
false  criteria  of  excellence,  and  scatter 
the  flowers  here  and  there  by  twos  and 
threes,  or  even  in  greater  numbers,  and 
you  will  no  longer  complain  of  their  want 
of  beauty,  or  be  troubled  at  their  speedy 
fading.  The  leaves  will  be  a  delightful 
object  to  watch  from  February  to  May. 
But  people  will  not  see  the  beauty  of 
scattered  plants.  I  remember  looking  at 
a  show  of  highly  cultivated  Tulips,  and 
contrasting  it  with  two  flowers  altogether 
untrained,  which  stood  upon  the  open  bed 
of  a  garden  little  better  than  a  wilder- 
ness. One  of  the  flowers  was  yellow, 
and  the  other  a  deep  rich  red ;  and  the 
109 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

sun  shining  through  the  latter  gave  it  a 
transparency  which  made  it  glow  like 
wine.  I  would  sooner  have  had  those 
two  neglected  flowers  than  all  the  exhi- 
bition. 

But  there  is  a  second  way,  more  im- 
portant even  than  the  last,  in  which  the 
modern  system  tends  to  injure  a  healthy 
taste  for  flowers — I  allude  to  the  custom 
of  putting  out  plants  in  the  beds  just  for 
the  period  of  bloom,  and  then  removing 
them,  as  if  both  before  and  after  flower- 
ing they  were  destitute  of  interest.  A 
garden  is,  in  fact,  no  longer  the  home 
of  plants,  where  all  ages,  the  young,  the 
mature,  and  the  decayed,  mix  freely  and 
in  easy  dress.  It  has  degenerated  into  a 
mere  assembly-room  for  brilliant  parties, 
where  childhood  and  age  are  both  alike 
out  of  place.  In  some  gardens  the  system 
is  carried  out  plainly  and  unaffectedly. 
There  are  no  spring  flowers  at  all  worth 
mentioning,  but  sufficiency  of  shrubs  and 
evergreens  to  make  the  place  look  neat ;  and 
we  see  the  main  space  occupied  by  large 
bare  beds,  which  will  receive  the  summer 
visitors  when  they  come.  About  the  be- 
ginning of  May,  these  half-hardy  plants 
are  put  in,  and  miserably  uninteresting 
they  look  for  a  while,  till  at  length  they 
no 


Faults  in  Gardening 

burst  into  their  few  months'  splendour, 
to  be  finally  swept  away  in  mass  by  the 
early  frosts.  Other  gardeners  have  a  little 
more  care  for  spring.  There  is  a  show  of 
Hyacinths  and  bulbous  plants,  but  they 
have  manifestly  been  newly  set,  and  are 
removed  at  once  when  they  have  ceased 
to  flower.  By  newly  set  I  mean  either 
planted  at  the  close  of  autumn,  or  in  pots 
at  the  time  when  they  happen  to  be  in 
bloom. 

Now  the  natural  course  is  for  people 
to  delight  in  loving  and  cherishing  plants 
from  their  earliest  youth,  and  in  tracing 
their  slow  progress  into  age.  Nothing 
can  be  more  pleasurable  than  this.  At 
the  commencement  of  the  year  we  see 
the  green  tips  of  the  Snowdrops  and 
Crocuses,  then  those  of  the  Daffodils 
appear,  then  some  fine  morning,  unex- 
pectedly, as  we  enter  the  garden,  a  Golden 
Aconite  has  lifted  its  face  from  a  cluster 
of  buds  still  down-bent,  and  given  us 
cheerful  greeting,  coming,  perhaps,  just 
where  we  had  least  expected  it — from 
some  bed  where  we  had  forgotten  that 
it  grew.  Then  day  after  day  we  watch 
the  slow  unfolding  buds  of  the  trees,  and 
the  progress  of  each  separate  plant,  as  if 
it  were  our  own  child,  till  at  length  the 
in 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

latest  have  put  forth  their  blossoms  ;  and 
then  tenderly  and  reverently  we  stand 
beside  them  as  they  wither,  and  observe 
how  they  yield,  some  speedily,  some 
slowly,  to  the  force  of  the  increasing  cold. 
In  this  healthy  natural  way  of  garden- 
keeping  there  is  far  less  thought  of 
splendour.  The  plants  on  a  bed  are  not 
all  in  bloom  together,  but  spring  and 
summer  flowers  are  everywhere  inter- 
mixed. Whilst  looking  at  some  early 
blossom,  we  enjoy  the  contrast  of  its  more 
tardy  neighbours,  beautiful  exceedingly 
now  in  the  first  freshness  of  their  budding 
foliage,  and  promising  far  higher  glories 
in  two  or  three  months'  time.  The  bed 
does  not  display  all  its  treasures  at  once, 
or  we  should  rather  say  that  our  undazzled 
eyes  can  here  perceive  the  high  value  of 
plants  which  are  not  in  bloom  ;  the  whole 
garden  seems  one  loud  voice  of  exultant 
hope:  "Take  this  now,  and  see  besides 
what  a  rich  bank  there  is  to  draw  upon 
for  the  future." 

But  far  different  is  the  procedure  in 
the  modern  garden.  Everything  tends  to 
prevent  us  from  considering  the  plant  as 
a  living  and  growing  thing.  A  living 
plant  fastens  firmly  upon  the  soil,  and 
evidently  belongs  to  it  ;  makes  itself  a 

112 


Faults  in  Gardening 

place,  and  alters  everything  near ;  for- 
bids the  approach  of  some  weaker  neigh- 
bour, and  encounters  the  thrust  of  some 
stronger  one  in  its  turn.  When  plants 
are  made  movable  their  personality  is 
half  destroyed,  and  by  confining  attention 
to  them  exclusively  at  the  time  of  flower- 
ing, we  complete  the  mischief.  The  plant 
is  never  old,  never  young  ;  in  fact,  it  de- 
generates from  a  plant  into  a  coloured 
ornament.  Look  at  a  Scarlet  Geranium, 
as  you  sometimes  see  it  in  a  greenhouse, 
with  long  woody  stems  continuing  from 
year  to  year  ;  it  may  be  somewhat  un- 
tidy, but  it  can  make  you  love  it,  and 
can  well  bear  comparison  in  this  respect 
with  the  more  brilliant  offslips  of  the 
border.  And  cannot  you  see  how  in 
these  show-beds  all  hope  is  taken  away  ? 
If  covered  with  spring  flowers,  these  are 
all  in  bloom  together.  Of  course  we 
know  that  there  are  summer  flowers  to 
follow,  but  they  do  not  stand  full  of 
radiant  promise  amongst  the  earlier  ones, 
to  please  us  by  the  contrast.  They  have 
not  yet  been  put  in.  How  hopeless  and 
artificial,  how  unlike  Nature,  is  all  this ! — 
Nature,  which  keeps  us  in  perpetual  ex- 
pectation, in  literally  unbroken  round, 
from  year's  beginning  to  year's  end.  I 
113  H 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

do  not  say  that  every  show-bed  is  wrong  ; 
but,  generally  speaking,  it  is  wrong  to 
gather  all  beauty  into  one  particular 
time  or  place  ;  and,  above  all,  the  spring 
flowers,  as  a  whole,  should  be  well 
scattered  and  intermixed  with  the  summer 
plants,  or  we  can  never  learn  to  love  them 
as  we  ought.  As  to  general  effect,  I 
would  not  have  it  neglected,  but  sought 
after  in  its  noblest  possible  kind.  I  am 
only  contending  that  justice  to  the  whole 
effect  of  a  bed  or  garden,  instead  of  being 
incompatible  with,  is  absolutely  insepar- 
able from,  justice  to  the  individual  flowers. 
The  third  fault  of  gardening — the  too 
obvious  use  of  mechanical  contrivances, 
and  other  artificial  interferences  with  the 
free  development  of  the  plant — is  less  the 
characteristic  danger  of  our  day.  In  many 
cases  artificial  helps  are  indispensable.  It 
is  unquestionably  right  to  try  to  make 
flowers  assume  the  best  possible  shapes, 
and  if  these  are  unattainable  without  such 
helps,  the  helps  cannot  always  be  objected 
to.  A  certain  degree  of  constraint  in  the 
appearance  of  our  gardens  is  absolutely 
necessary  from  the  sort  of  plants  we  de- 
light in — the  half-hardies  and  evergreens. 
The  freedom  and  apparent  carelessness, 
which  would  be  good  in  better-assorted 
114 


Faults  in  Gardening 

gardens,  would  here  look  slovenly  and 
untidy.  The  beauty  our  cultivators  prize 
is  that  of  neatness  and  compactness.  Na- 
ture gives  us  this  in  spring — the  very 
season  when  we  are  most  careless  about 
our  grounds — and  we  try  to  produce  it  in 
the  summer-time,  which  was  intended  for 
a  looser  and  freer  growth.  It  is  scarcely 
needful  to  dwell  longer  on  this  head. 
There  are  people  even  now  so  unfeeling 
as  to  clip  their  trees  into  the  form  of  foun- 
tains and  peacocks,  and  we  sometimes  see  a 
bed  of  much-prized  flowers  so  embarrassed 
with  pots,  hoops,  sticks,  and  matting,  that 
our  interest  in  the  flowers  is  destroyed — 
they  seem  like  the  inmates  of  a  prison. 
But  most  people  see  the  wrong  of  this,  and 
the  favourite  flowers  of  the  day  are  hardly  of 
the  kind  which  need  it.  It  is  singular  how 
little  a  highly  artificial  treatment  of  certain 
plants  will  displease  us,  where  things  grow 
freely  as  a  whole.  I  n  a  well-stocked  kitchen 
garden  how  little  we  are  annoyed  by  the 
fantastic  shapes  into  which  fruit-trees  are 
often  cut ;  we  pass  them  over  like  an  ill- 
shaped  tree  or  unsightly  fence  in  the  open 
country,  amid  the  fulness  of  unembarrassed 
life.  And  the  forms  of  the  kitchen  vege- 
tables— rhubarb,  asparagus,  and  cabbage 
— are  generally  so  magnificent. 
"5 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

Lastly,  we  come  to  the  arrangement  of 
flowers  after  they  have  been  cut.  Of  course, 
all  arrangements  are  bad  which  destroy  the 
general  character  and  expression  of  a  flower 
for  the  sake  of  some  particular  quality. 
Many  people  seem  to  think  that  they  have 
nothing  to  do  but  to  place  flowers  so  that 
their  colours  will  look  nice.  We  often  see 
little  nosegays  with  Fuchsia  bells  pulled 
off  and  stuck  in  upright — that  is  to  say, 
upside  downwards.  Now  any  one  who 
really  cares  about  Fuchsias  cannot  help 
being  annoyed  at  this.  His  eye  necess- 
arily rests  upon  the  long,  unmeaning  stigma 
— unmeaning  now,  but  so  beautiful  in  its 
natural  posture,  where  it  carries  off  the 
flower-droop,  and  prevents  it  from  being 
cut  off  too  suddenly  and  abruptly  by  the 
straight  wide  margin  of  the  cup.  But  the 
arranger  heeds  nothing  of  this.  He  has 
the  colour  he  requires — for  I  suppose  him 
to  have  an  eye  for  colour — and  that  is 
sufficient.  I  have  seen  people  do  just  the 
same  with  the  splendid  blossom  of  the 
Horse  Chestnut.  When  that  tree  comes 
into  flower,  there  is  often  a  very  sudden 
curve  in  the  shoots  of  the  lower  branches, 
which  makes  it  extremely  difficult  to  fix 
the  shoot  in  water,  without  either  tilting 
the  end  of  the  stalk  out  of  the  water,  or 
n6 


Faults  in  Gardening 

bending  the  blossoms  to  one  side.  Now 
many  will  get  rid  of  the  difficulty  by  delib- 
erately turning  the  shoot  upside  downwards, 
so  as  to  make  the  blossoms  pendulous 
instead  of  upright,  when,  of  course,  all  their 
beauty  is  destroyed.  The  pendulous  blos- 
som so  inverted  looks  weak  and  straggling, 
the  erect  one  stiff  and  heavy.  Many,  too, 
cram  flowers  together  in  round  dense 
bunches,  so  that  we  can  see  the  shape  of 
nothing.  Sometimes  this  can  hardly  be 
avoided,  as  in  the  case  of  Cowslips  or 
Violets.  And  assuredly  few  contrasts  can 
be  more  lovely  than  Violets,  white  and 
purple,  massed  together  with  a  bunch  of 
Primroses,  and  all  resting  on  the  broad 
green  Primrose  leaves.  But  what  we  get 
here  is  chiefly  the  colour  and  the  smell. 
Flowers  generally  are  best  arranged  more 
loosely,  and  with  more  of  the  herbage 
attached,  even  if  there  must  be  fewer  of 
them.  Thus  in  spring  I  like  to  have  two 
or  three  bright  scarlet  Anemones  (hor- 
tensis),  with  two  or  three  spikes  of  Grape 
Hyacinth  (racemosum),  two  Jonquils,  two 
pieces  of  white  Ranunculus,  two  brown 
Fritillaries  (pyrenaica)  and  two  white  ones, 
and  a  single  stem  of  the  large  pink  Saxi- 
frage, and  all  these  intermixed  and  put  to- 
gether loosely  in  a  small  vase,  so  as  to  look 
117 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

as  if  they  were  growing  in  a  meadow,  but 
growing  unusually  close.  Summer  flowers 
may  be  arranged  more  massively,  but  are 
often  cut  without  sufficient  length  of  stalk, 
so  that  the  Larkspurs  cannot  rise  well  out 
of  the  Sweet-Williams  and  shorter  species. 
Always,  then,  look  well  to  the  forms,  and 
let  these  be  clearly  seen  and  skilfully  com- 
bined. Take  care  of  them,  and  the  colours 
will  take  care  of  themselves.  For  nine 
people  have  an  eye  for  colour  to  one  who 
thinks  about  form;  and  those  who  care 
nothing  for  colour  will  seldom  be  much 
interested  in  flowers. 

But  are  these  faults  we  have  been 
speaking  of  universal  ?  That  I  really 
cannot  say ;  though  well  acquainted  with 
flowers,  I  know  comparatively  little  about 
gardening.  I  merely  allude  to  faults 
which  we  are  continually  meeting  with 
in  greater  or  less  degree,  and  which 
seem  to  be  fast  spreading  in  our  private 
gardens ;  and  I  have  thought  best  to 
attack  these  evils  in  their  boldest  and 
most  decisive  forms.  At  any  rate,  I 
have  shown  my  meaning ;  and  where 
the  charges  do  not  apply,  they  will  do 
no  injury. 


n8 


Faults  in  Gardening 


NOTE  i 

The  best  plants  for  gardens  are  Euro- 
pean or  quasi- European  species,  because 
these  are  the  most  congenial  to  our  soil 
and  climate,  and  the  most  perfectly  in- 
telligible to  us  in  their  habits  and  mode 
of  growth.  But  how  many  people  can 
have  any  clear  idea  as  to  what  Geraniums 
or  Calceolarias  would  look  like,  or  try  to 
do,  where  they  grow  wild  and  free?  I 
myself  continually  feel,  as  in  the  case  of 
the  Chinese  Primrose,  that  such  ignorance 
is  a  great  bar  to  my  enjoyment  of  the 
flower,  and  the  knowledge  is  scarcely  to 
be  got  from  books.  Yet  it  must  always 
be  distinctly  borne  in  mind  that  Art  is 
not  Nature.  Let  people  create  beauty 
howsoever  they  please,  and  of  whatsoever 
materials,  we  must  not  blame  them  unless 
we  can  show  that  their  method  is  in- 
jurious. But  I  do  blame  the  modern 
taste  as  tyrannous  and  exclusive,  casting 
out  just  the  plants  which  should  be 
dearest  to  us,  to  make  room  for  those 
which  can  never  come  so  near  to  heart. 
Think  of  gardeners  stigmatising,  as  I  am 
told  is  the  case,  the  Lilac  and  Laburnum 
as  plebeian !  —  the  Laburnum,  the  fair- 
119 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

haired  lady  of  the  garden.  To  what 
pitch  of  degradation  must  that  man's 
taste  have  sunk  who  could  reject  and 
despise  so  elegant  a  tree  as  this ! 

NOTE  2 

But  why  should  we  not  receive  the 
garden  as  a  pure  creation  of  the  gar- 
dener, feel  that  it  is  beautiful,  and  be 
satisfied  with  that,  without  looking  any 
further?  The  question  is  implicitly  an- 
swered in  the  last  chapter.  Because  in 
such  a  manner  we  shall  never  gain  a 
strong  interest  in  the  individual  flowers. 
Unfortunately,  this  easy  course  is  the 
very  one  which  most  people  prefer  to 
take,  and  which  the  gardeners  desire  that 
they  should  take.  But  to  feel  deep  de- 
light in  plants,  and  yet  think  little  about 
them — to  love,  and  not  wish  to  know 
intimately  the  object  loved — is  a  palpable 
impossibility.  When  people  act  in  this 
way,  their  feelings  cannot  be  worth  much. 
Besides,  to  an  unspoiled  taste  the  beauty 
of  our  modern  gardens  is  in  many  re- 
spects unpleasing,  and  we  greatly  miss 
the  higher  kind  of  beauty  of  which  it  is 
depriving  us. 


120 


Faults  in  Gardening 


NOTE  3 

Of  course  my  remarks  in  the  preceding 
chapter  are  in  nowise  directed  against  the 
common  hardy  annuals.  These  plants 
pass  their  whole  term  of  life  in  the  gar- 
den, start  up  from  the  ground  in  their 
proper  season  as  naturally  as  do  the 
weeds,  and  it  is  quite  immaterial  whether 
they  are  self-sown  or  sown  by  hand.  It 
is  widely  different  in  the  case  of  those 
half  -  hardy  flowers  —  perennials,  made 
annual  most  of  them — which  are  set  in 
the  beds  in  the  middle  of  their  growth, 
and  are  weeks  before  they  seem  at  home. 
I  think  such  beds  highly  objectionable 
when  constituting  the  sole  or  main  feature 
of  a  garden,  to  which  everything  else 
must  give  way.  The  common  annuals 
are,  in  fact,  of  great  value,  especially  for 
children's  gardens.  Their  growth  can  be 
watched  from  the  earliest  stages,  and  its 
great  rapidity,  the  speedy  performance  of 
all  promise,  together  with  the  conscious- 
ness of  having  tended  the  plant  from  the 
very  first,  exerts  a  peculiar  fascination. 
But  many  annuals  are  getting  spoilt 
through  the  senseless  desire  of  change 
for  the  sake  of  change ; — old  good  sorts 

121 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

thrown  away  to  make  room  for  new  and 
inferior  ones,  and  sound  pure  colouring 
rejected  for  streaky,  splashy  variety. 

NOTE  4 

If  you  have  flowers  growing  in  your 
rooms  in  the  early  months  of  the  year, 
let  them  be  as  much  as  possible  of  exotic 
and  unfamiliar  species,  rather  than  such 
as  properly  belong  to  the  out-of-door 
garden.  Take,  for  instance,  Mimosas, 
Camellias,  Hyacinths,  in  preference  to 
Snowdrops,  Aconites,  or  Crocuses.  The 
reason  for  this  is  obvious.  A  house- 
raised  Snowdrop  will  seldom  be  as  beau- 
tiful as  one  grown  in  the  open  air,  for 
the  cold  is  not  uncongenial  to  these 
plants,  and  the  warmth  of  a  room  is  far 
more  likely  to  weaken  them  than  to 
develop  them  to  greater  advantage.  Be- 
sides, the  flower  -  pot  necessarily  gives 
them  a  much  more  artificial  look,  so 
that  you  are  depriving  yourself  of  half 
the  pleasure  you  would  gain  from  the 
out-of-door  blossoms  when  they  come,  by 
dulling  your  appetite  with  these  miser- 
able makeshifts,  instead  of  waiting  with 
patience.  The  Christmas  Rose  is  some 
exception  to  what  I  have  said.  Its 

122 


Faults  in  Gardening 

blossoms,    I   believe,   are  generally  much 
finer  in  the  greenhouse. 

NOTE  5 

We  exclude  from  our  gardens  as  weeds, 
and  with  perfect  justice,  such  plants  as 
our  ordinary  Cruciferae  and  Umbelliferae, 
or  the  common  Dead  Nettles  and  Clovers. 
This  does  not  necessarily  mean  that  they 
are  deficient  in  beauty,  but  that  they 
have  not  any  of  those  effective  qualities 
— that  power  of  instantly  attracting  the 
eye  when  planted  separately,  which  is 
necessary  in  a  garden  flower.  Chcz- 
rophyllum  temulum,  for  instance,  like 
many  another  of  the  Hemlocks,  is  a 
most  graceful  plant  when  met  with  in  a 
country  lane,  but  if  placed  on  the  border, 
a  great  part  of  its  beauty  would  vanish. 
It  needs  the  dense  green  vegetation  of 
the  hedge  bottom  to  show  it  off  to  advan- 
tage. But  Mullein,  Borage,  Foxgloves, 
and  the  larger  Spurges  ought  not  to  be 
considered  weeds.  Such  plants  have 
their  proper  place  in  the  garden,  and 
may  be  very  pleasing  there,  though  it  is 
just  upon  this  class  that  the  modern  taste 
weighs  heaviest.  Where  are  all  those 
quaint,  strange  plants  which  used  to  make 
123 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

us  wonder  ?  Rhododendrons  are  very 
beautiful,  but  they  cannot  supply  that 
loss.  Strange !  and  yet  it  was  a  strange- 
ness which  sprang  almost  from  beneath 
our  feet,  out  of  what  seemed  most  familiar, 
and  not  like  that  of  some  far  -  fetched 
tropical  growth.  This  strangeness  ex- 
cited strong  interest,  and,  as  it  were, 
difficulty  of  belief,  it  seemed  so  very 
near ;  the  strangeness  of  tropical  plants 
excites  much  less  of  this,  for  we  can 
credit  with  more  ease  what  belongs  to 
countries  so  far  away,  and  of  which  we 
know  so  little.  And  surely  in  that  child- 
world,  where  everything  is  wonderful,  it 
is  better  that  we  should  have  our  deepest 
interest  aroused  by  such  plants  as  our 
own  Wake-robin  than  by  any  of  those 
distant  curiosities.  I  use  the  old  name 
Wake-robin  because  it  is  so  full  of  poetry 
— to  think  of  the  bird  aroused  from  sleep 
by  the  soundless  ringing  of  that  bell. 
Arum,  or  Lords  and  Ladies,  is  the  more 
usual  name.  In  none  of  those  plants, 
then,  which  I  mentioned  above,  do  I  see 
unfitness  for  the  garden.  They  have 
not  the  dulness  and  heaviness  of  the 
Stachys  and  many  other  Dead  Nettles 
(the  dulness  of  the  Henbane  is  widely 
other),  nor  the  coarseness  of  Charlock  or 
124 


Faults  in  Gardening 

Turnip,  nor  straggling  looseness,  nor  any 
other  of  similar  objectionable  qualities : 
here  and  there,  accordingly,  such  plants 
should  be  admitted. 


NOTE  6 

I  believe  that  nearly  every  plant  has 
an  especial  loveliness  of  its  own — a  some- 
thing distinctive,  that  is,  which  is  capable 
of  endearing  it  to  us.  And  though  such 
degraded  forms  as  Torilis  nodosa  may 
attract  us  chiefly  as  curiosities  in  all 
but  exceptional  instances,  this  loveliness 
founds  itself  upon  some  form  of  genuine 
beauty  —  beauty,  I  grant,  which,  as  a 
whole,  is  often  of  an  inferior  order  ;  thus 
there  is  nothing  to  strike  the  eye  in  the 
common  wild  Mignonette,  or  in  many  of 
the  Galiums,  Willow-herbs,  Groundsels, 
Rushes,  Sedges ;  and  yet  it  frequently 
happens  that  these  plants,  not  generally 
attractive,  excel  at  particular  times  and 
in  particular  ways.  Usually  few  people 
would  admire  the  Yellow  Charlock,  yet 
what  splendour  it  often  casts  over  the 
yet  green  corn-fields  when  blended  with 
the  scarlet  of  the  Poppies  !  Anthriscus 
vulgaris,  sylvestris,  and  many  of  the 
Umbelliferae  are  remarkable  for  the 
I25 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

beauty  of  their  earliest  leaves  ;  those 
especially  of  the  great  Cow  Parsnep 
might  serve  as  models  for  the  stone- 
carver  ;  and  the  coarse,  insignificant 
Goose-grass  (Galium  aparine),  which 
children  rub  over  their  tongues  to  make 
them  bleed,  fills  every  hedge-bottom  in 
January  and  February  with  a  host  of  tiny 
star -crosses  as  delicate  as  the  work  of 
fairies.  Then  observe  that  tall  A  nthriscus 
sylvestris  later  on  in  June,  how  it  varies 
the  long  level  of  many  an  unmown 
meadow  with  the  dull  misty  white  of  its 
flowers,  giving  by  the  looseness  of  its 
growth  a  wild,  indefinite  look,  here  and 
there  almost  reminding  us  of  tumbled 
foam,  an  effect  which  is  greatly  aided  by 
the  meanness  and  unimpressiveness  of  its 
foliage.  Then  the  two  common  Dead 
Nettles  (Lamium)  are  very  undeservedly 
depreciated.  The  Red  Dead  Nettle  is 
one  of  our  earliest  spring  flowers,  and 
there  is  a  soft  vividness  in  the  red,  espe- 
cially in  the  earlier  blossoms,  which  leads 
off  most  exquisitely  through  the  purplish 
tints  of  the  upper  leaves.  As  to  the 
White  Dead  Nettle,  I  will  say  nothing  of 
it  in  the  spring-time,  when  it  is  outshone 
by  more  brilliant  rivals.  I  always  prefer 
it  when  the  November  mists  are  falling, 
126 


Faults  in  Gardening 

and  its  large,  soft  flowers,  undamaged  by 
the  weather,  look  forth  here  and  there 
from  the  hedge.  Truly  they  have  a  won- 
derful fascination  then.  In  early  spring 
the  plant  has  a  too  excessive  vigour — an 
air  of  rude  health,  which  often  spoils  it, 
partly,  I  think,  by  affecting  the  leaf  colour; 
besides,  the  stems  are  apt,  then,  to  be 
far  too  numerous.  It  is  otherwise  in 
November. 

Plants  are  thus  far  more  universally 
beautiful  than  animals,  because  plants  can 
never  disgust  or  repel — animals  can.  And 
though  it  were  easy  to  name  plants  in 
which  one  feels  no  vivid  interest,  as,  for 
instance,  Senecio  sylvaticus,  I  find,  on 
running  through  our  native  lists,  these  to 
be  comparatively  so  few,  that  the  fault  lies 
most  probably  with  the  observer. 

NOTE  7 

What  horror  is  excited  by  some  insects 
— spiders  and  centipedes — especially  in 
their  gigantic  tropical  forms !  Not  to 
feel  this,  argues  insensibility  to  a  part 
of  Nature's  language,  and  deprives  us 
of  pleasure,  for  it  is  with  a  horror 
bordering  on  the  sublime  that  we  read 
of  the  huge  Mygales — spiders  almost  a 
127 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

oot  across.  Naturalists  get  too  much 
deadened  to  these  feelings,  just  as  a 
medical  student  finds  his  dread  of  the 
corpse  to  become  so  far  diminished  as 
seriously  to  impair  his  relish  for  any  tales 
of  fear.  He  gets  to  look  upon  it  too 
much  as  a  mass  of  ordinary  matter.  By- 
the-bye,  what  is  the  use  of  such  pests 
of  hot  countries  as  mosquitoes  and  the 
other  creatures  I  have  named  ?  Ap- 
parently this :  man  is  meant  for  a  life 
of  labour,  to  which  the  temperate  climes 
are  best  adapted.  But  in  the  tropics 
labour  is  far  more  productive  than  in 
the  temperate  zone,  and  if  there  were 
nothing  to  prevent  it,  most  men  might  go 
there  for  an  easy  life.  So  God  holds  man 
back  by  a  host  of  plagues,  of  which  these 
creatures  form  a  part.  You  may  live  in 
the  tropics  if  you  will,  but  your  comforts 
must  be  heavily  counterbalanced. 

NOTE  8 

No  one  would  ever  dream  of  employing 
our  commoner  British  flowers  for  the 
main  stock  of  a  garden.  We  must  have 
there  something  essentially  different  from 
what  is  found  in  the  Wild.  We  like 
our  home  to  be  fenced  in  by  a  little 
128 


Faults  in  Gardening 

world  of  novelty  as  well  as  of  brilliance 
and  choiceness,  and  hence  a  twofold 
reason  points  us  to  the  more  conspicuous 
beauty  of  the  foreign  flowers.  But  this 
is  not  our  only  ground  for  selecting 
foreign  plants.  Cultivation  is,  in  many 
cases,  extremely  beneficial  to  plants,  but 
in  other  instances  it  is  difficult  to  com- 
pete with  the  wilding,  and  almost  im- 
possible to  surpass  it.  In  Gorse — such, 
for  instance,  as  we  see  in  Devonshire 
— Foxglove  (unless,  to  borrow  an  idea 
from  Ruskin,  a  greater  number  of  its 
blossoms  could  be  persuaded  to  come 
out  simultaneously),  or  Broom,  no  im- 
provement of  any  kind  could  well  be 
suggested.  These  plants  would  be  none 
the  better  for  enlargement  of  the  flowers, 
and  both  shapes  and  colours  are  already 
as  fine  as  they  can  be,  so  that  meddling 
further  would  only  spoil  them,  as  we 
see  to  be  the  case  in  the  Double  Gorse. 
Now  unless  the  cultivated  flower  in 
some  way  surpasses  the  wilding,  it  must 
inevitably  sink  below  it  in  effect.  For 
one  thing  is  entirely  lost  in  the  garden 
— the  beauty  derived  from  the  native 
mode  of  growth.  Look  at  the  Bluebell 
Hyacinths,  when  their  countless  myriads 
are  poured  forth  beneath  the  trees  like 
129  i 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

a  scented  twilight,  the  blue,  wherever 
it  grows  thin,  dimming  into  such  coy, 
uncertain  cast,  that  it  seems  like  a  misty 
exhalation,  or  as  if  May  had  sportively 
dashed  the  earth  with  her  coolest  and 
most  fragrant  wine.  Gather  a  handful 
from  that  drooping,  host  or,  still  better, 
sit  down  and  study  the  flower  as  it 
grows,  and  you  would  say  scarcely  any- 
thing could  be  more  lovely.  But  what 
do  we  think  of  it  in  a  garden  ?  There 
is  perhaps  no  real  inferiority,  if  the 
plants  be  well  grown  and  limited  to  the 
shade  ;  but  the  spirit  and  vitality  seem 
in  a  measure  wanting,  and  our  interest 
consequently  is  feeble.  The  Bluebell 
often  spoils  in  the  garden  from  an  un- 
natural bloating  of  its  flowers  ;  but,  apart 
from  this,  there  is  such  an  utter  separa- 
tion from  the  circumstances  which  gave 
full  effect  to  its  beauty,  that  it  is  as  the 
gem  without  the  setting,  the  setting  sun 
stripped  of  the  gorgeous  robing  of  his 
clouds.  Now  in  cases  like  this,  the 
sight  of  the  cultivated  plant  may  do 
you  positive  harm.  As  in  the  house- 
grown  Snowdrop,  you  become  familiar- 
ised with  what  is  virtually  an  inferior 
condition,  and  this  only  deadens  your 
love.  The  plant  will  probably  get 
130 


Faults  in  Gardening 

surrounded  with  unpleasant  associations, 
but  at  any  rate  you  learn  to  see  it 
without  interest,  and  that  is  very  mis- 
chievous. The  consequence  is  that, 
generally  speaking,  we  should  either  ex- 
clude these  common  native  plants  from 
the  garden,  or  so  alter  them  by  cultiva- 
tion that  they  shall  seem  like  a  different 
thing.  The  Double  Buttercup  (Bachelor's 
Buttons)  is  a  common  country  example 
of  the  way  in  which  they  may  be  so 
altered,  and  the  Garden  Daisies  and 
Polyanthuses  are  still  better  examples, 
being  more  completely  metamorphosed. 

Now  this  argument  will  generally  tell 
most  with  respect  to  those  native  flowers 
which  are  less  conspicuous,  less  remark- 
able for  brilliancy  and  other  garden- 
needed  qualities.  Thus  the  Bluebell  and 
Forget-me-not  lose  infinitely  more  in 
the  garden  than  the  Globe  Flower  and 
the  Columbine.  Yet  this  is  not  all,  as  the 
Foxglove  shows  us  ;  there  are  the  local 
associations,  though  these  are  actually 
very  much  more  valuable  in  some  plants 
than  in  others.  When  we  see  it  in  the 
garden  we  can  scarcely  appreciate  the 
Foxglove — that  glorious  link  betwixt  the 
heath,  the  wood,  and  the  open  meadow 
— for  want  of  the  light  grassed  soil, 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

the  bracken  and  the  gorse,  and  all  its 
other  friends.  And  the  Bluebell  fails  in 
our  gardens,  not  solely  because  it  is 
thrown  back  on  its  own  unassisted  merits, 
but  partly  because  it  is  dragged  from 
its  destined  sphere  of  display.  Plant 
it  by  the  side  of  Scilla  campanulata — 
the  common  garden  bell  which  so  much 
resembles  it,  though  it  has  dark  red 
stamens,  and  larger,  wider-open  flowers 
— and  I  think  that  most  people  will 
prefer  the  Scilla ;  partly,  no  doubt, 
because  the  Bluebell  is  an  English  flower, 
but  partly,  too,  because  the  Scilla,  though 
in  itself  less  beautiful,  has  a  beauty  more 
adapted  to  the  garden,  and  which  loses 
far  less  than  the  Bluebells  by  being 
isolated.  I  feel  confident  that  our  verdict 
would  be  reversed,  if  we  could  compare 
the  plants  as  they  grow  wild. 

The  Bluebell  and  Foxglove  are  in 
themselves  not  unfit  for  gardens,  or  as 
illustrations  of  my  argument  they  would  be 
worthless.  They  become  objectionable 
there,  mainly  because  they  are  common 
native  plants,  with  strong  local  associations, 
and  grow,  at  full  advantage,  wild. 

My  conclusion,  then,  is,  let  the  Garden 
be  to  the  Wild  idem  in  alter o ;  that  is  to 
say,  let  it  be  mainly  stocked  with  plants  of 
132 


Faults  in  Gardening 

close  affinity  to  our  own,  so  as  to  be 
adapted  to  our  climate  and  to  be  pretty 
thoroughly  intelligible  to  us,  but  yet  let 
them,  as  far  as  possible,  be  of  different, 
dissimilar,  and  more  splendid  species. 
Such  species  are  more  attractive  in  them- 
selves, and  lose  least  by  being  stripped  of 
their  natural  surroundings.  It  may  be 
necessary  to  remind  the  reader  that  Globe 
Flowers,  Jacob's  Ladder,  Columbine,  and 
many  other  of  our  most  valuable  garden 
plants  are  native  species ;  but  they  are 
very  locally  distributed  in  Britain.  If 
commoner,  though  we  should  still  employ 
them,  their  value  would  be  injuriously 
diminished.  Still  not  unfrequently  a  com- 
mon plant,  like  the  Primrose,  will  be 
found  to  do  good  service. 


NOTE   9 

Solon  declared  that  to  be  the  best  of 
governments  in  which  an  injury  done  to 
the  meanest  subject  is  an  insult  to  the 
whole  community.  Now  this  is  pretty 
much  the  law  of  a  garden.  Nothing  is 
more  objectionable  than  the  manner  in 
which  the  common  plants  are  often  treated 
to  make  way  for  the  grandees.  Bulbs 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

taken  up  before  they  are  ready,  and 
dwarfed  for  next  season  in  consequence ; 
small  trees  or  shrubs  transplanted  care- 
lessly, and  thrust  in  wherever  they  will 
do  no  harm,  because  a  little  too  good  to 
throw  away,  and  not  quite  good  enough 
to  deserve  just  treatment;  and  many  other 
plants  neglected,  overshadowed,  or  in 
some  way  stinted  of  their  due,  as  not 
being  worth  much  trouble.  At  times, 
even  worse  than  this,  we  see  murderous 
digging  and  slashing  amongst  plants  in 
their  period  of  growth.  This  is  not  a 
healthy  process  for  the  mind.  Whatever 
is  unfairly  treated  is  better  altogether 
away,  since  we  can  view  it  with  no  hearty 
relish.  And  this  injustice  to  the  least  is 
felt  inevitably  in  a  measure  by  all,  for  it 
affects  the  spirit  of  the  place.  Half  the 
charm  of  the  old-fashioned  garden  lies  in 
that  look  of  happy  rest  among  the  plants, 
each  of  which  seems  to  say,  "  All  plant 
life  is  sacred  when  admitted  here.  My 
own  repose  has  never  been  disturbed,  and 
I  am  confident  it  never  will  be."  You 
feel  this  to  be  a  sort  of  haven  of  plant 
life,  preserved  by  some  hidden  charm  from 
the  intrusion  of  noxious  weeds.  The 
modern  garden,  on  the  contrary,  is  too  apt 
to  assume  a  look  of  stir  and  change  ;  here 


Faults  in  Gardening 

to-day,  gone  to-morrow.  The  very  tidi- 
ness of  the  beds  and  the  neat  propriety  of 
the  plants  contribute  to  this  impression. 
We  feel  the  omnipresence  of  a  severity 
which  cannot  tolerate  straggling.  None 
have  been  admitted  but  polished  gentlemen 
who  will  never  break  the  rules ;  and  we 
feel  that  the  most  cherished  offender  would 
be  instantly  and  remorselessly  punished.1 
But  the  old  garden  impresses  us  always 
by  that  evidence  of  loving  tenderness  for 
the  plants.  "  That  wallflower  ought  not 
to  have  come  up  in  the  box-edging;  but 
never  mind,  we  must  manage  to  get  on 
without  hurting  the  wallflower."  And  At 
is  this  spirit  of  compromise,  this  happy, 
genial,  kindly  character,  as  contrasted  with 
the  sterner  and  less  loving  spirit  which 
you  feel  ready  to  descend  upon  any  trans- 
gressor in  a  moment,  that  makes  the 
difference  of  which  we  speak. 

It  is  plain,   then,   that    in   any  garden 
where  the  meaner  plants  are  slighted  or 

1  I  have  been  referring  here  to  the  herbaceous  plants 
and  evergreens  of  the  ordinary  beds  (Thujas,  Junipers, 
Rhododendrons,  &c.),  rather  than  to  the  larger  trees  and 
shrubs.  To  run  down  the  glorious  Rhododendrons  in 
themselves  would  be  preposterous,  but  they  always  have, 
however  large  they  may  grow,  an  air  of  gentlemanly  re- 
straint, a  drawing-room  manner,  as  it  were,  which  must 
produce  the  effect  we  have  described  wherever  they  are 
very  numerous. 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

endangered,  this  sense  of  security  is  im- 
possible. Each  should  be  safe  and 
honourable  by  right  of  citizenship,  by 
the  mere  fact  of  its  presence  being 
allowed.  We  should  feel  that  the  test 
of  merit  has  been  applied  already,  and 
is  not  liable  to  renewal.  But  if  we  can- 
not regard  this  decision  as  final,  if  the 
meaner  plants  are  always  liable  to  be 
retried,  and  possibly  condemned,  or  ne- 
glected as  of  doubtful  worth,  everything 
alike  will  share  their  risk.  The  most 
beautiful  is  then  cast  upon  its  own  merits 
exclusively,  and  the  thought  of  final  rest 
is  gone. 

"But  you  must  be  recommending  a 
general  scene  of  misrule,  if  the  plants 
are  to  do  as  they  please."  No,  for  I 
am  only  dealing  with  appearances.  If 
the  wallflower  which  has  strayed  into  the 
box  should  look  unsightly,  by  all  means 
root  it  out.  I  only  want  the  aspect  of 
liberty  in  the  plants,  so  that  the  garden 
shall,  as  most  wild  vegetation  is,  be  ex- 
pressive of  fatherly,  indulgent,  peaceful 
rule ;  for  the  vegetable  kingdom  is  the 
sphere  of  all  others  from  which  disquiet 
and  restraint  are  by  nature  the  most 
completely  banished.  Life  is  too  cold  in 
the  mineral  kingdom  ;  in  the  animal  we 
136 


Faults  in  Gardening 

rise  into  the  region  of  will  and  contest 
with  moral  evil.  Amongst  plants  there 
is  comparatively  little  to  disturb ;  the 
beauty,  if  of  a  lower  type,  is  more  gene- 
rally perfect  than  anywhere  else,  and  no- 
where can  we  find  better  images  of  the 
rest  of  heaven  than  in  a  broad  expanse 
of  flowers.  I  spoke  of  box-edgings.  We 
used  to  see  these  in  the  little  country 
gardens,  with  paths  of  crude  earth  or 
gravel.  Nowadays  it  has  been  discovered 
that  box  harbours  slugs,  and  we  are  be- 
ginning to  have  beds  with  tiled  borders, 
whilst  the  walks  are  made  of  asphalt ! 
For  a  pleasure-ground  in  Dante's  Inferno 
such  materials  might  be  suitable. 


'37 


II 

On   Gardeners'*  Flowers 

I  THINK  that  the  question  left  from 
last  chapter  will  be  most  advan- 
tageously treated  in  a  somewhat 
more  extended  form.  So  we  will 
now  inquire  into  the  mischief  which  is 
done  to  taste  by  a  too  exclusive  atten- 
tion to  highly  cultivated  plants.  A  flower 
in  its  natural  state,  as  for  instance  the 
Primrose  or  Buttercup,  will  generally  con- 
sist of  the  following  elements :  an  outer 
ring,  green  and  leaf-like,  which  is  called 
the  calyx,  and  an  inner  ring,  usually 
coloured,  the  corolla.  These  are  but  the 
floral  envelopes,  and  either  of  them  may 
be  modified  in  all  manner  of  ways, — 
being  coloured,  colourless  (which  in  bo- 
tanical language  means  green),  or  alto- 
gether wanting.  Within  them  lies  the 
true  flower,  composed  of  the  thread-like, 
pin  -  headed  stamens,  and  the  central 
organs,  or  pistils,  which  afterwards  ripen 
'38 


On  Gardeners'  Flowers 

into  fruit.  Now  each  of  these  parts, 
stamen,  pistil,  or  petal,  essentially  is 
nothing  but  an  altered  form  of  leaf,  a 
leaf  as  it  were  half  nourished.  And 
under  favourable  circumstances,  with  an 
increased  supply  of  food,  their  forms  can 
readily  be  changed,  The  stamens  and 
pistils  become  petals,  the  petals  them- 
selves increase  in  size  and  number,  and 
we  have  what  is  called  a  double  flower. 
And  the  cultivator  usually  considers  a 
flower  most  perfect  when  he  has  suc- 
ceeded in  making  it  double,  of  extra- 
ordinary size,  and  of  what  he  regards  as 
the  most  perfect  shape  and  colour.  At 
least,  he  then  has  done  his  utmost,  and 
the  worth  of  the  product  is  determined 
too  much  by  the  labour  and  skill  which 
it  has  cost.  But  gains  of  this  sort  cannot 
possibly  be  unattended  with  loss.  Let 
us  take,  for  instance,  the  double  garden 
Roses,  and  although  they  are  mostly  de- 
rived from  handsomer  foreign  species,  it 
will  be  enough  for  our  purpose  to  com- 
pare them  with  the  common  Dog  Rose 
of  the  hedge.  Here,  then,  in  the  garden 
flower  the  shape  is  truly  magnificent. 
There  are  the  countless  large,  soft,  fra- 
grant petals,  nestling  round  so  closely  into 
the  fulness  of  that  deep  warm  bosom, 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

and  with  a  colour  often  scarce  less  ex- 
quisite, which  sinks  into  the  deep  central 
dimple  with  a  glowing  blush,  like  a 
sunset  into  the  clouds.  Then  turn  to 
the  Moss  Rose,  and  see  how  deliciously 
the  opening  tints  of  the  bud,  like  the 
face  of  an  awakening  beauty,  look  forth 
from  their  nest  of  thick  green  viscous 
moss.  It  would  be  difficult  to  adduce  better 
instances  of  what  cultivation  can  achieve. 
But  let  us  contrast  these  with  the  Dog- 
Rose.  In  the  first  place,  we  find  that 
in  the  garden  plants  the  long  arched 
shoots  have  disappeared,  which  stretch 
high  over  the  hedge,  or,  descending, 
trail  down  their  fragrant  burden  into 
the  shady  lanes  below,  within  easy  reach 
of  every  passer-by.  Beautiful  are  they, 
close  at  hand  !  Beautiful  in  the  distance 
when  the  hedges  are  everywhere  breaking 
forth  into  the  creamy  foam  of  elder 
blossom,  picked  out  with  these  showery 
touches  of  pink !  Now  such  a  free  dis- 
play of  the  general  form  of  the  Rose  is 
evidently  impossible  in  a  garden.  The 
plant  must  be  cut  down  to  the  shape  of 
the  compacter  standard,  or  else  be  dis- 
posed upon  trellis- work.  In  either  case 
its  freedom  is  restrained,  and  even  the 
freedom  of  trellis-work  is  incompatible 
140 


On  Gardeners'  Flowers 

with  the  full  perfection  of  the  blossom. 
Next  we  will  look  at  the  blossom,  for 
that  is  the  point  which  I  would  princi- 
pally consider.  In  the  wild  plant  you 
may  at  first  greatly  miss  the  full  sub- 
stantial form  of  the  double  Rose,  and 
the  range  of  pink  colours  may  also  be 
less.  Possibly,  therefore,  your  first  im- 
pression will  be  that  the  flower  seems 
thin,  loose,  and  weak.  But  you  will 
begin  to  see  presently  that  this  is  only 
the  effect  of  the  contrast.  You  cannot 
point  out  any  real  defect  —  one  thing 
that  could  be  altered  to  advantage. 
Every  part,  as  you  examine  it,  seems 
precise  in  aim,  and  well  calculated  to 
set  off  the  rest,  and  in  essential  respects 
there  is  a  far  wider  range  of  contrast 
in  the  flower  itself.  The  soft  petal 
bosom,  it  is  true,  is  gone,  but  look  at 
the  delicate  garland  of  countless  stamens 
which  replaces  it.  In  the  one  case 
there  is  nothing  but  calyx  and  petals, 
the  same  thing  being  again  and  again 
repeated.  In  the  other  a  new  set  of 
elements  is  introduced,  and  elements  of 
extreme  significance,  for  they  vary  ex- 
ceedingly in  all  different  species  of  plants, 
and  generally  the  greatest  pains  are  be- 
stowed to  give  them  prominence  and 
141 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

beauty.  And  observe  what  deep  mean- 
ing they  throw  into  the  aspect  of  the 
Rose,  giving  it  that  expression  of  peace- 
ful dreamy  rest,  something  of  which, 
though  varied  in  a  hundred  ways,  is 
common  in  blossoms  where  the  stamens 
are  numerous,  as,  for  instance,  we  may 
often  discern  it  in  the  Rock  Rose  and 
Ranunculaceous  orders.  Now  I  have 
here  made  a  contrast  the  most  unfavour- 
able that  could  be  thought  of  for  my  pur- 
pose. I  have  taken  one  of  the  gardener's 
noblest  flowers,  which  has  a  dignity  of 
form  united  with  a  significance  of  ex- 
pression, such  as  cannot  be  met  with 
in  any  other  double  flower,  and  yet  I 
think  it  must  be  felt  that  in  the  garden 
plant  a  very  great  deal  has  been  lost, 
and  furthermore  that  this  loss  is  of  im- 
mense importance.1 

1  The  finest  Dog-Roses — I  mean  those  which  are  the 
deepest  pink — in  many  respects  far  surpass  in  colour  the 
double  Garden  Roses.  In  the  first  place,  their  blush  is 
almost  unrivalled  in  the  maiden  softness  of  its  glow. 
Then  observe  through  what  a  wide  range  of  harmonies 
we  are  led — outermost  you  see  this  sweet  glowing  pink, 
then  a  circle  which  is  almost  white,  then  the  rich  orange 
of  the  stamens,  and  finally  a  green  disc  in  the  centre,  all 
these  hues  melting  into  and  supporting  each  other  with  a 
softness  and  beauty  indescribable.  Can  we  meet  with 
anything  like  this  in  the  Garden  Roses  ?  But  the  force 
of  the  effect  does  not  depend  upon  colour  alone.  If  you 
look  at  the  Dog-Rose  with  half-closed  eyes,  and  fancy 
142 


On  Gardeners'  Flowers 

"  But  study  the  single  Rose  as  I  may," 
you  perhaps  tell  me,  "  I  cannot  like  it 
much  after  the  double  one.  I  think  it 
wants  body,  it  seems  loose  and  weak, 
and  I  really  care  little  for  it.  My  feeling 
is  altogether  so  different  when  I  come 
to  the  double  Rose  from  the  single. 
These  little  points  you  mention,  the 
stamens  and  the  pistils,  never  enter  my 
head  for  a  moment ;  I  do  not  feel  the 
want  of  them,  they  are  wholly  forgotten 
in  that  luxuriant  fulness  of  beauty.  Does 
not  this  prove  the  absolute  superiority 
of  the  double  flower,  seeing  that  I  feel 
no  loss  in  it,  and  that  it  gives  me  all 
which  is  essential  for  my  pleasure  ? " 
By  no  means.  The  one  thing  really 
proved  is  this,  that  your  taste  is  most 

for  a  moment  that  those  alternating  bands  of  pink,  white, 
and  orange  are  but  changes  in  the  tints  of  the  corolla, 
you  will  find  that  their  value  is  half  lost.  The  effect  of 
the  stamens  and  pistils,  and  the  highest  value  of  their 
colour,  depends  upon  their  being  quite  unlike  the  petals 
in  make,  being  quite  new  and  dissimilar  structures.  It 
should  also  be  remembered  that  double  Roses  are  some- 
what difficult  to  find  perfect.  A  well-formed  Cabbage 
Rose,  and  especially,  perhaps,  a  Moss  Rose,  will  serve 
to  illustrate  what  I  have  said  in  the  text.  Here  the 
petals  fold  closely  over  one  another,  so  that  we  get  a 
solid  rotundity  of  form,  which  is  too  often  frittered  away 
in  those  blossoms  where  the  petals  are  erecter  and  their 
concentric  rings  more  open.  The  best  of  this  latter 
class  are  very  good  indeed,  but  the  worse  ones  ex- 
ceedingly poor. 

143 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

seriously  injured.  You  cannot  believe  that 
the  work  of  God  is  faulty  here,  and  that 
the  Wild  Rose  is  an  imperfect  creation.1 
You  never  would  have  thought  it  so  if 
you  had  seen  it  before  you  saw  the  double 
flower.  With  you  it  is  only  faulty  by 
comparison.  So  that  here  is  a  pure, 
noble,  and,  as  all  men  of  right  feeling 
will  tell  you,  a  perfect  work  of  its  kind, 
in  which  you  can  take  no  pleasure, 
because  to  you  it  seems  weak  and  faulty. 
Now,  to  speak  my  own  feelings,  though 
in  turning  to  the  Garden  Rose  I  cannot 
feel  it  faulty  any  more  than  you  do,  I 
soon  find  that  I  miss  something  there  ; 
that  is,  I  should  soon  be  wearied  if  I 
had  none  but  such  Roses  as  these,  and 
was  absolutely  debarred  from  the  com- 
plete wild  ones.  And  do  you  not  see 
the  reason  of  this,  viz.,  that  the  beauties 
of  the  cultivated  Rose  are  more  especially 
of  that  sensuous  striking  kind  which  can 
hardly  be  overlooked,  and  are  apt  to 
veil  in  their  blaze  the  simpler  and  less 
obtrusive,  though  more  deeply  satisfying, 

1  Whether  God  ever  purposely  makes  flowers  defective 
is  quite  another  question.  But  such  instances  are  cer- 
tainly exceptional.  And  the  ground  on  which  the  single 
Rose  is  here  condemned  would  condemn  the  large 
majority  of  our  most  beautiful  single  flowers  upon  the 
general  principle  of  their  construction. 
144 


On  Gardeners'  Flowers 

charms  of  the  Wild  Rose?  "  But  some 
of  our  double  Roses  have  their  stamens 
and  pistils  left  to  them."  They  have, 
and  in  trimming  betwixt  single  and  double 
they  have  lost  the  excellences  of  both. 
Double  flowers  are  often  good  and  highly 
valuable,  but  in  nearly  every  instance 
that  I  can  call  to  mind  the  half-way  be- 
twixt single  and  double  is  a  thorough 
failure.  The  multiplied  petals  have  de- 
stroyed the  simplicity  of  the  single,  whilst 
they  cannot  give  the  full  form  of  the 
double  blossom,  and  the  stamens  are  often 
more  or  less  disarranged  and  broken, 
and  in  any  case  such  petals  must  make 
them  worthless.  From  this  general  con- 
demnation I  should  except  the  half-double 
Columbine,  where  the  many  rows  of 
petals  fit  together  into  a  very  elegant 
bonnet  shape.  The  peculiar  structure 
in  a  flower  like  this  prevents  much  of 
the  usual  mischief.1  What,  then,  is  the 
general  conclusion  to  which  I  would 
lead  ?  I  would  say  that  the  doubling 
of  a  blossom,  whatever  advantages  may 
accrue  from  it,  tends  on  the  whole  to 

1  An  approach  to  half -double  flowers  may  some- 
times be  found  in  Nature  in  such  types  as  the  Cactus, 
where  the  petals  are  very  numerous,  and  in  several  rows  ; 
but  the  arrangement  is  much  less  beautiful  than  the  more 
common  kind. 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

destroy  individuality,  to  sweep  away  the 
differences  between  flowers,  and  to  bring 
them  all  down  to  uniformity  ;  and  worst 
of  all,  it  detracts  from  the  life  of  the 
expression.  The  stamens  and  pistils, 
which  are  half  the  character  of  the  flower, 
which  are  as  the  very  eyes  in  the  human 
countenance,  are  removed  to  make  room 
for  more  showy  colour,  and  for  a  fuller 
and  more  massive,  but  as  a  whole  inferior, 
form.  For  we  should  pause  before  saying 
that  any  of  these  gains  is  a  gain  in  the 
highest  sense.1 

How  rich  is  the  crimson  of  the  double 
Peony  —  how  delicious  to  wander  from 
fold  to  fold  of  those  innumerable  petals, 
almost  as  if  amongst  the  clouds,  and  see 
how  the  ever-changeful  tints  deepen  and 
graduate  between  them !  Do  I  blame 
the  gardener  for  creating  this?  Not  at 
all,  but  I  would  have  you  observe  what 
has  been  lost.  The  single  Peony  had 
not  that  lavish  wealth  of  crimson,  that 
wide  play  of  a  single  hue,  but  in  true 
splendour  it  surpassed.  For  the  quantity 
of  its  crimson  was  determined  by  a  given 
purpose,  was  carefully  arranged  and  ac- 
curately proportioned  so  as  to  contrast 
with  the  central  crown.  The  one  blossom 

1  See  Note  7  at  the  end  of  the  chapter. 
146 


On  Gardeners'  Flowers 

gives  a  rich  sensuous  pleasure  which 
steeps  the  soul  as  in  a  bath ;  the  other 
a  pleasure  of  a  much  higher  kind,  and 
embracing  far  wider  compass.  Colour,  it 
has  been  said,  is  life — that  which  gives 
vitality  to  form.  It  exists  not  only  for 
itself,  but  to  carry  out  an  object.  And 
the  colour  of  the  single  Peony  most  beau- 
tifully does  this.  The  actual  range,  too, 
of  colour,  as  generally  happens,  is  much 
wider  than  in  the  double  flower,  for  the 
orange  and  green  of  the  stamens  and 
pistils  are  superadded  to  the  crimson — 
not  perhaps  those  oranges  and  greens 
best  calculated  to  show  off  separately, 
but  those  best  adapted  to  the  particular 
effect  here  required,  to  light  up  the  parts 
by  striking  contrast,  and  to  give  the  look 
of  a  living  thing.  In  the  double  Peony, 
on  the  contrary,  the  less  brilliant  colours 
are  refused.  There  must  be  nothing  in- 
ferior to  crimson.  And  we  can  have  any 
quantity — the  more  the  better ;  for  there 
is  here  no  nice  balance  to  be  preserved, 
no  form  to  be  set  off,  but  that  of  a  large 
round  ball,  massive  and  handsome  enough, 
but  by  no  means  highly  individualised. 
And  what  is  the  consequence  ?  The 
fully-opened  flower  of  the  single  Peony 
is  like  the  countenance  of  a  living  crea- 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

ture ;  that  of  the  double  has  a  form  so 
vague  and  featureless  that  we  might  easily 
forget  that  it  was  a  flower  at  all,  and 
think  that  we  were  looking  at  a  magni- 
ficent bunch  of  delicately  coloured  ribbons. 
Yet  when  I  speak  of  colour  being  sub- 
ordinated to  a  purpose  in  the  single  flower, 
I  do  not  mean  that  it  is  in  anywise  of 
less  importance.  Colour  is  nowhere  more 
brilliant  and  precious  than  in  flowers,  but 
the  best  effects  must  be  got  by  judicious 
use,  and  not  by  lavish  exuberance.1 

In  every  instance  where  we  have  seen 
a  flower  only  in  its  double  state,  we  feel 
to  know  little  about  it,  for  it  appears  but 
half  a  flower.  There  is  a  plant  common 
in  gardens  which  I  have  been  told  is  a 
species  of  Corchorus.2  I  like  what  I  know 
of  it,  and  would  gladly  make  its  nearer 

1  I  would  not  deny  that  the  double  flower  may  at  times 
gain  greatly  in  colour  taken  as  a  whole.     Look,  for  in- 
stance, at  the  double  pink  Hepatica,  which  appears  in 
February  and  March,  gleaming  like   a  little  amethyst 
amongst  the  Crocuses,  the  bright  clear  hue  being  doubly 
delightful  from  its  rarity  at  that  early  season.     Yet,  after 
all,  the  pink  and  white  Hepaticas  are  but  inferior  varieties 
of  the  blue,  and  no  double  modification  of  any  of  them  is 
able  to  equal  that.     It  will  be  seen  too,  that  in  even  the 
single  pink  Hepatica  the  ordinary  rule  applies — it  has 
more  life  expression  than  the  double. 

2  [The  plant  is  the  double  Kerria  japonica.     It  was 
called  Corchorus  till  the  single  form  was  found,  and  the 
mistake  was  discovered.     Kerria  and  Corchorus  are  of 
two  quite  distinct  families. — H.  N.  E.] 

148 


On  Gardeners'  Flowers 

acquaintance,  but  the  double  blossoms 
hold  me  quite  aloof,  and  it  seems  little 
better  than  a  stranger.  Notwithstanding, 
in  the  double  Rose  and  Peony,  whatever 
may  be  the  loss,  the  gain  is  in  some  re- 
spects great.  There  are  other  flowers, 
however,  in  which  the  case  is  widely 
different.  Look,  for  instance,  at  the  blos- 
som of  a  well-grown  single  Hollyhock, 
with  its  central  column  of  white  mealy 
stamens,  around  which  the  bees  are  for 
ever  digging  and  burrowing,  and  observe 
how  beautifully  this  column  completes  the 
deep  bowl-like  corolla,  and  then  stand 
apart  and  see  how  by  these  columns  the 
whole  spire  is  illuminated,  every  part  of 
it  brought  out  into  clear  relief,  as  by  a 
lamp  placed  in  the  centre  of  each  flower. 
No  mere  alteration  of  colour  could  ever 
produce  this  effect.  It  is  only  to  be  got 
by  an  essential  change  of  structure  in 
the  parts  of  the  flower.  Now  would  you 
think  it  possible  that  any  one  would  be 
willing  to  throw  away  these  beautiful 
stamens,1  and  have  the  corolla  choked  up 
by  a  blind  unmeaning  mass  of  spongy 

1  [In  most  double  Hollyhocks  the  stamens  remain  ;  for 

the  double  flower  is  a  collection  of  single  flowers  within 

one  involucrum,  and  so  differs  from  the  double  Peony,  in 

which  the  stamens  are  converted  into  petals. — H.  N.  E.] 

149 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

petal  ? l  Yet  such  is  actually  the  case. 
And  once,  when  I  went  into  the  market 
to  ask  for  single  Hollyhocks,  the  gar- 
dener, civil  as  he  was,  seemed  absolutely 
taken  by  surprise.  " Single  Hollyhocks! 
No,  sir,  I  wouldn't  keep  such  things ! " 

The  common  Garden  Anemone  is  an- 
other case  in  point :  never  was  the  effect 
of  central  organs  better  seen  than  in  the 
single  flower,  where  the  stamens  cluster 
so  exquisitely  around  and  into  that  black 
bee-like  crown.  Now  the  Anemone  has 
some  peculiar  charm  which  excites  in  me 
an  almost  indescribable  rapture,  and  that 
crown  is  as  it  were  the  very  culmination 
of  the  whole.  And  I  cannot  but  think 
that  here,  if  not  in  the  Hollyhock,  the 
double  flower  which  the  gardeners  so 
much  prefer  will  be  absolutely  painful, 
from  its  inferiority,  to  any  man  of  right 
feeling,  who  has  the  means  of  obtaining 
the  single  one.  Now  the  effect  of  such 
false  principles  fully  carried  out  may  be 
seen  in  the  taste  of  the  common  people. 
They  will  generally,  under  any  circum- 
stances, prefer  the  highly  cultivated  flower 

1  Unmeaning,  that  is,  in  comparison  with  what  it  re- 
places. The  blossoms  of  the  double  Hollyhock  have  a 
full,  noble  form,  but  one  can  never  heartily  enjoy  them 
from  a  sense  of  what  is  missing. 

150 


On  Gardeners'  Flowers 

to  the  simple  one,  just  for  that  one  quality 
of  bigness  and  plumpness.  In  the  same 
way,  most  vulgar  people  admire  great  red- 
faced  women,  and  judge  of  the  beauty  of 
prize  pigs  and  oxen  by  their  size. 

There  is  the  double  Snowdrop — on  the 
whole,  I  should  think,  the  most  ungainly 
flower  we  have.  All  the  characteristic 
beauty  of  the  Snowdrop,  the  delicate  cur- 
vatures of  the  petals,  the  contrast  betwixt 
the  light,  thin,  flexible  outer  petals,  and 
the  inner,  short,  stout,  unyielding  cup, 
have  wholly  disappeared,  in  order  that 
that  light  graceful  form  may  be  stuffed 
out  as  you  would  stuff  a  pillow-case,  with 
a  bunch  of  strips  arranged  like  a  pen- 
wiper. The  gain  here  is  positively 
nothing,  for  fulness  in  the  Snowdrop  is 
a  real  deformity.  Yet  the  common  people 
often  say  they  would  not  give  a  straw  for 
Snowdrops  if  they  are  not  double  ones. 
There  are  many  other  double  flowers 
which  are  utterly  bad,  without  any  re- 
deeming quality,  such  as  double  Violets, 
Narcissuses,  Tulips,  and  Nasturtiums. 

Lastly  in  double  flowers  how  the  shape 
of  the  petals  is  destroyed  !  There  is  natu- 
rally a  wide  difference  in  form  between 
the  petals  of  a  Saxifrage  and  those  of  a 
Cruciferous  plant.  Look,  for  instance,  at 
15* 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

a  single  Stock  or  Wallflower.  The  broad 
coloured  blade  of  the  petal  runs  inwards 
horizontally  to  the  very  centre  of  the 
blossom,  so  as  to  press  in  close  upon  the 
stamens,  and  then  turns  downwards  with 
a  sudden  bend  into  a  long  invisible  claw. 
Now  take  a  Saxifrage  ;  most  of  the  com- 
mon tufted  kinds  would  do,  or  the  large 
pink  Crassifolia  of  the  gardens,  or  Saxi- 
fraga  granulata.  Here  the  petal  form  is 
entirely  different,  sloping  down  gradually 
like  a  funnel,  and  leaving  the  centre  of  the 
flower  widely  open.  Now,  in  the  double 
flower  all  this  character  is  lost  from  the 
centre  of  the  blossom  being  choked  up, 
and  the  clawed  and  unclawed  petals  look 
pretty  much  alike. 

We  have  taken  double  flowers  as  the 
furthest  point  to  which  the  art  of  gardening 
carries  us,  but  in  highly  cultivated  single 
flowers  we  find  the  same  tendencies, 
although  in  a  less  degree.  There  is  the 
same  general  disposition  to  bring  every- 
thing to  the  largest  possible  size  and  a  full 
rounded  shape.  And  the  course  here  fol- 
lowed is  in  the  main  undoubtedly  the  right 
one.  But  whilst  it  creates  much  beauty, 
it  is  still  attended  with  losses,  though 
of  far  less  importance  than  those  I  have 
just  described.  Thus  our  Wild  Pansies 


On  Gardeners'  Flowers 

have  an  extremely  irregular  corolla.  The 
four  upper  petals  point  upwards,  though 
perhaps  not  always  quite  so  markedly  as 
is  described  in  botanical  books,  an^l  tend  to 
a  more  or  less  oblong  form.  Now  these 
characteristic  peculiarities  in  the  petals, 
with  the  very  characteristic  and  beautiful 
effect  -which  arises  from  them,  are  com- 
pletely rounded  away  in  the  Garden  Pansy  ; 
its  shape  is  nearly  circular.  The  gain  is 
here  of  the  highest  value,  for  the  outline, 
colour,  and  expression  in  a  good  Garden 
Pansy  are  all  alike  most  beautiful,  so  that 
the  flower  is  sound  as  a  work  of  art ;  but 
still  its  advantages  are  necessarily  attended 
with  the  almost  complete  destruction  of 
the  original  character  of  the  plant.  Some- 
thing of  the  same  sort  will  be  seen  in  the 
greenhouse  Geraniums,  or,  more  strictly 
speaking,  Pelargoniums.  The  marked  ir- 
regularities of  the  corolla,  which  every 
one  must  have  noticed  in  the  smaller 
species,  and  which  are  common  to  all  alike, 
in  greater  or  less  degree,  often  get  well- 
nigh  obliterated  in  the  artificial  fulness  of 
the  larger  and  handsomer  plants.  The 
improvements  are  still  more  valuable  and 
beautiful  than  in  the  Pansy,  but,  as  in  the 
Pansy,  much  of  the  natural  shape  is  inev- 
itably lost  in  producing  them.  We  may 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

trace  this  even  in  the  Tom  Thumb  Ge- 
ranium and  its  larger  garden  varieties. 
And  so  in  other  instances.  The  irregular- 
ities, the  narrowness,  the  unsymmetrical 
arrangements  of  Nature,  disappear  to 
some  extent  in  the  highly  cultivated  plant, 
and  a  different  character  is  introduced. 
Although  large  size  is  a  very  important 
object,  it  must  not  be  too  heedlessly  sought 
after.  I  have  known  writers  speak  as  if 
beauty  could  be  estimated  by  tape  measure 
— the  improvements  made  in  the  Anemone 
being  tested  by  the  fact  that  the  diameter 
of  the  blossom  had  been  increased  from 
one  inch  to  six.  But  what  are  we  the  better 
for  Anemones  six  inches  across  ?  The 
mere  fact  of  their  being  so  large  would  be 
sufficient  proof  that  they  had  been  spoilt. 
The  dangers  resulting  from  too  great 
love  of  double  flowers  are  sufficiently 
obvious  from  what  I  have  said  already. 
Yet  it  must  not  be  thought  that  I  am 
trying  to  depreciate  the  just  merits  of  the 
class.  Though  as  a  whole  inferior  to  the 
single  blossoms,  their  superiority  in  indi- 
vidual points  is  often  undeniable.  The 
best  double  forms,  like  those  of  the  Peony 
and  the  Rose,  have  a  fulness  and  majesty 
which  cannot  but  be  deeply  felt,  resulting 
from  that  broad  and  massive  rotundity 


On  Gardeners'  Flowers 

than  which  no  other  single  quality  can  be 
more  immediately  impressive.  And,  in 
addition  to  this,  we  have  the  gorgeous 
colour,  spread  over  a  wider  surface  than 
in  the  single,  and  often  with  infinitely 
greater  command  over  some  particular 
hue.  But,  spite  of  all  this,  though  the 
double  flower  both  may  and  ought  to 
yield  us  much  enjoyment,  I  think  just 
feeling  will  prefer,  for  the  reasons  already 
given,  to  anchor  permanently  on  the 
single.  The  double  may  be  handsomer, 
and  in  some  respects  more  dignified,  but 
we  feel  it  to  be  less  of  a  companion. 

And  excessive  attention  to  highly  culti- 
vated single  flowers  is  not  without  its 
hazards.  Do  we  not  often,  whilst  ad- 
miring those  large,  broadly  developed 
forms  with  their  splendid  colours,  feel  a 
want  of  something  more  quiet  and  re- 
served? To  take,  for  instance,  that 
magnificent  blue  Larkspur,  which  the 
gardeners  call  Formosum,1  and  which  has 
become  one  of  the  commonest  kinds  from 
its  extraordinary  beauty,  we  cannot  help 
feeling  a  sort  of  excess,  a  want  of  suffi- 
cient sobriety  in  the  flower,  which  some- 
what mars  our  pleasure.  To  give  a 
parallel  from  poetry.  Few  critics  would 

[l  Delphinium  formosum. — H.  N.  E.j 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

find  fault  with  Keats'  "  St.  Agnes'  Eve." 
We  are  glad  to  obtain  such  a  glorious 
vision  at  any  cost.  And  yet  here  and 
there  we  find  its  beauty  almost  oppressive, 
in  that  continual  effort  after  the  utmost 
possible  luxury  of  sensuous  appeal.  How 
the  richness  of  the  spiced  dainties,  of  the 
dishes,  the  cloth,  in  fact,  of  everything  in 
the  room,  is  pressed  forward !  We  feel 
constantly  as  if  it  would  have  been  impos- 
sible for  the  poet  to  carry  this  a  single 
hair's  -  breadth  further.  It  is  not  so  in 
Tennyson's  "  Recollections  of  the  Arabian 
Nights,"  and  the  richer  style  can  hardly 
be  considered  perfectly  healthy. 

Now  I  know  a  Larkspur  far  inferior  in 
beauty  to  Formosum,  to  which  it  is  a 
relief  to  turn,  because  the  colour  is  so 
chastely  used,  and  every  portion  of  it  is 
made  of  such  good  account.  Look,  too, 
at  the  Gentianella,  the  most  glorious  blue 
we  have.  One  touch  of  the  tint,  and  only 
one,  but  how  it  makes  us  long  for  more ! 
If  we  could  fill  the  tube  with  the  enchant- 
ing colour,  and  spread  it  over  the  dark 
outside,  should  we  really  find  that  we  had 
gained  anything  ?  It  is  just  in  this 
severity,  this  giving  full  value  to  all  the 
colour  used,  that  highly  cultivated  flowers 
are  oftenest  defective.  Perhaps  we  should 
156 


On  Gardeners'  Flowers 

rather  say,  that  their  most  distinctive  ex- 
cellence lies  in  another  direction. 

The  more  natural  flowers  exhibit  gene- 
rally a  self-imposed  restraint,  and  reser- 
vation of  power :  they  seem  making  no 
effort  to  be  beautiful.  The  highly  cul- 
tivated flower  will  often  impress  us  too 
much  with  this  idea  that  it  is  doing  its 
utmost,  and  that  it  could  not  well  be 
larger,  nor  fuller,  nor  its  colours  in  the 
least  more  showy.1  Consequently,  in  the 
largest  Auriculas,  Wallflowers,  Azaleas, 
Petunias,  we  feel  a  certain  laxity,  as  if 
the  form  were  almost  breaking  from  its 
bounds.  By  keeping  too  much,  then,  to 
these  garden  flowers,  you  will  be  tempted 
to  lose  sight  of  the  value  of  narrowness 
in  shape,  and  of  modest  severity  in  colour- 
ing, and  be  continually  wishing,  as  the 
gardener  generally  does,  to  see  everything 
carried  on  from  fuller  to  fuller,  and  so  to 
the  perfect  consummation  of  fulness  in  the 
double  blossom. 

We  may  say  that  the  gardener's  taste 
bears  a  certain  analogy  to  that  of  Rubens. 

1  Just  as  in  looking  at  the  Farnese  Hercules  you  say, 
"  What  a  noble  figure  !  Could  any  one  imagine  a  frame 
more  muscular  than  this?"  But  no  such  thought  ever 
enters  your  head  whilst  you  contemplate  the  superb 
proportions  of  the  Theseus  (Hercules?)  of  the  Elgin 
marbles. 

157 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

Rubens  was  a  master  of  amazing  power, 
and  it  lay  easily  within  his  compass  to 
give  form  of  a  very  high  order,  along  with 
much  dignity  and  pathos,  if  not  absolute 
beauty,  of  feature.  But  in  general  the 
effect  of  his  forms  depends  rather  upon 
sensuous  fulness  than  upon  fineness  of 
proportion  and  delicately  moulded  outline. 
This  is  most  obviously  seen  in  his  women. 
You  cannot  deny  that  they  often  have 
magnificent  figures,  as,  for  instance,  the 
goddesses  in  the  "  Judgment  of  Paris," 
in  the  National  Gallery,  and  still  more  in 
other  cases  where  there  is  loose  and 
flowing  drapery,  but  the  beauty  is  com- 
paratively of  a  low  and  sensuous  type. 
There  is  something  very  different  in  the 
figures  of  the  best  antiques,  or  in  the 
heads  of  Leonardo  da  Vinci.  And  we 
may  go  yet  higher,  so  as  to  speak  of  ex- 
pression, and  compare  these  women  of 
Rubens'  with  Raphael's  St.  Catherine,  or 
with  that  Madonna  by  Perugino  in  the 
National  Gallery,  around  whom  the  still 
landscape,  with  its  sacred  light,  seems  to 
gather  like  a  glory.  In  these  pictures 
there  is  nothing  superficially  attractive, 
except  the  colouring  of  the  latter ;  the 
figures  are  somewhat  heavy,  the  hands 
large  and  careless,  but  does  not  the  soul 
158 


On  Gardeners'  Flowers 

within  them  shine  brighter  and  brighter 
as  we  gaze,  and  will  not  every  painter 
allow  the  superiority  of  such  beauty  ? 
Even  so  it  is  with  many  a  simple  field- 
flower.  We  scarcely  know  what  its  beauty 
comes  from,  what  renders  it  so  dear,  so 
full  of  deeper  meaning,  and  yet  sooner 
than  lose  it  we  would  part  with  some  of 
the  choicest  flowers  of  the  garden,  and 
many  a  wild  one  which  far  surpasses  it  in 
every  outward  advantage. 

We  may  note  another  point  of  compari- 
son. One  of  Rubens'  highest  excellences 
is  colour,  a  very  showy  colour, — in  fact, 
always  toned  up  to  a  certain  standard  of 
floridity.  But  is  Rubens,  with  all  his  gor- 
geousness  and  prodigality,  ever  ranked 
with  the  very  greatest  colourists?  Now, 
our  gardeners  very  closely  resemble  him 
here. 

In  conclusion,  then,  I  think  that  the 
gardener  does  wrong  in  too  frequently 
driving  out  the  single  flower  by  the  double, 
especially  when,  as  in  double  Anemones 
and  Hollyhocks,  the  gain  is  very  paltry  in 
comparison  with  the  loss.  He  is  wrong, 
moreover,  when  he  creates  what  can  only 
be  felt  as  deeply  degraded  flowers,  like  the 
doubleTulips,  Narcissuses,  and  Violets,  these 
last  being  only  valued  for  their  superior 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

fragrance ;  or  when  he  aims  at  great  size 
without  due  regard  to  its  effect  upon  the 
highest  beauty  of  the  plant  ;  or  when  he 
seeks  after  tawdry  variations  of  colour. 
He  acts  as  a  true  artist,  on  the  other  hand, 
in  creating  those  full,  rounded,  Rubens- 
like  forms,  whenever  they  are  really  noble  ; 
or  in  obtaining  any  worthy  gain,  whether 
by  increasing  the  size  of  the  blossoms  or 
intensifying  their  natural  brilliancy  of 
colour,  even  if  at  some  cost  to  the  perfect 
harmonies  of  the  plant ;  or  in  creating  such 
strange  loveliness  as  that  of  those  double 
Carnations,  where  the  edge  of  each  creamy 
petal  is  drawn  with  a  narrow  line  of  pink, 
all  the  rest  of  the  blossom  being  left  as 
spotless  as  the  snow  ;  or  lastly,  in  improv- 
ing, and  here  with  scarcely  any  drawback, 
the  various  kinds  of  fruit.  In  these  and  a 
hundred  other  such  cases  the  gardener  well 
deserves  the  gratitude  of  every  lover  of 
flowers. 

But  then  comes  our  caution.  Whilst 
looking  at  these  splendid  flowers,  let  us 
never  be  so  far  dazzled  as  to  forget  that 
they  are  for  the  most  part  highly  artificial 
products.  Much  of  their  beauty  is  pro- 
duced at  the  expense  of  native  character  ; 
and  the  cultivator,  perhaps  necessarily 
overvaluing  the  changes  effected  by  his 
160 


On  Gardeners'  Flowers 

art,  learns  to  fix  attention  too  much  upon 
beauties  of  one  special  type.  Hence,  with- 
out due  balance,  we  may  easily  get  to 
underrate  all  flower  beauty  to  which  this 
artificial  standard  is  inapplicable,  and  per- 
haps come  to  dislike  every  form  of  that 
wild  looser  sort  of  vegetation  which  is 
wholly  excluded  from  the  garden.  More- 
over, it  is  not  well  to  be  too  constantly 
dwelling  on  splendour.  We  need  some- 
thing more  sober  for  our  habitual  food. 
For  all  these  reasons,  if  we  would  avoid 
injury  to  the  taste,  we  must  make  wild 
flowers  our  habitual  study.  True  appre- 
ciation of  flowers,  as  I  have  said  before, 
can  only  be  learnt  in  the  fields.  Accustom 
yourself  to  contemplate  those  quiet  and 
unselected  charms,  look  again  and  again 
even  at  the  most  insignificant  till  you  are 
able  to  recognise  their  loveliness,  and  then 
you  will  know  what  true  excellence  means, 
and  be  in  no  danger  of  being  led  away  by 
meretricious  qualities.  The  pure  works 
of  God  will  give  you  the  best  criterion  for 
judging  the  works  of  man.  In  all  this, 
botany  will  assist  you  much,  by  making 
you  universal,  drawing  your  attention  to 
small  and  great  alike,  and  compelling  you 
to  take  note  of  a  thousand  peculiarities 
which  you  would  otherwise  overlook.  But, 
161  L 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

above  all  things,  scorn  nothing.  Never 
fear  to  admire  old-fashioned  flowers  because 
they  are  spoken  of  with  contempt.  Never 
fear  to  look  for  yourself;  to  form,  and 
slowly,  if  necessary,  your  own  opinion. 
Scorn,  in  fact,  of  anything  save  moral  evil, 
is  perhaps  the  basest  passion  known  to 
man.  Nothing  is  further  removed  from 
the  character  of  a  true-hearted  Christian 
gentleman  (and  two  sorts  of  gentlemen 
can  hardly  be  said  to  exist),  or  to  use  a 
vulgar  phrase,  there  is  nothing  in  the 
world  so  snobbish.  There  are  many  wide 
differences  betwixt  the  prince  and  the 
peasant,  but  in  whatever  rank  you  meet  a 
snob,  habitual  scorn  of  others,  or  of  any  of 
the  works  of  God,  is  the  infallible  mark 
by  which  you  know  him.1 

Perhaps  you  will  say  that  my  disparage- 
ment of  double  flowers  is  the  result  of  my 
being  a  botanist,  Well,  and  what  if  this 
be  true  ?  The  botanist  chooses  his  pursuit 
from  strong  instinctive  love  for  flowers, 
and  so  is  surely  more  likely  to  judge 

1  [With  this  fine  denunciation  of  the  scorner  we  may 
join  Daudet's  account :  "  Mes  amis,  ne  meprisons  per- 
sonne.  Le  mepris  est  la  ressource  des  parvenus,  des 
poseurs,  des  laiderons  et  des  sots,  le  masque  ou  s'abrite 
la  nullite,  quelquefois  la  gredinerie,  et  que,  dispense 
d'esprit,  de  jugement,  de  bonte.  Tous  les  bossus  sont 
meprisants  ;  tous  les  nez  tors  se  froncent,  et  dedaignent 
quand  ils  rencontrent  un  nez  droit." — Tartarin  sur  les 
Alpes,  c.  i.— //.  N.  £.] 

162 


On  Gardeners'  Flowers 

rightly  than  another  man.  I  admit  that 
there  may  be  some  botanists  who  are 
nothing  more  than  hard-headed  collectors 
of  names,  to  whom  plants  are  but  hooks 
on  which  labels  may  be  hung.  But 
botanists  of  another  class  have  in  this 
respect  been  much  misrepresented,  because 
they  do  not,  or  perhaps  cannot,  speak  out 
their  thoughts.  That  man  who  appears 
only  to  be  seeking  after  rare  or  novel 
species,  who  may  never  seem  to  notice  or 
be  interested  in  mere  scientific  arrange- 
ments, is  perhaps  tremblingly  alive  to  the 
beauty  of  what  he  finds ;  and  the  beauty 
is  of  more  importance  than  the  science,  as 
the  heart  is  nobler  than  the  head.  You 
may  not  be  able  to  see  what  good  such  an 
one  may  get  by  running  on  from  form  to 
form,  as  eagerly  as  if  seeking  after  gold,  and 
perhaps  he  himself  could  not  tell  you  ;  but 
if  God  thought  it  worth  His  while  to  plan 
these  forms,  it  is  surely  not  beneath  the 
dignity  of  man  to  study  them.  In  short, 
then,  a  botanist's  love  for  simple  natural 
flowers  is  generally  the  evidence  of  an 
uncorrupted  taste.  He  has  had  absolutely 
nothing  to  mislead  him,  for  his  original 
motive  in  the  study  can  seldom  be  other 
than  the  pure  inspiration  of  love ;  and  the 
study  itself  is  large  and  wide,  embracing 
without  any  exclusiveness  great  and  small, 
163 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

fantastic  and  beautiful  alike,  yet  all  of  the 
truest  workmanship.  He  takes  them  just 
as  he  finds  them,  blended  together  just  as 
God  saw  fit  that  they  should  grow.  The 
feelings  of  a  man  like  this  may  possibly  be 
cold,  but  it  is  hardly  likely  that  they  should 
be  radically  false.  But  does  not  the 
botanist  prefer  the  single  flower  because 
in  the  double  the  natural  connections  are 
undistinguishable  ?  No  doubt  that  he 
does.  For  this  is  no  barren  mechanical 
question.  It  means  not  only  that  we  can- 
not number  the  stamens  and  pistils  in  a 
double  flower,  but  that  nearly  all  which 
distinguished  it  from  other  flowers  is  gone. 
So  legibly  is  relationship  written  upon  the 
features  that  the  practised  botanist  can 
generally  guess  a  strange  plant's  family 
(natural  order)  at  a  glance,  petal,  stamen, 
and  every  other  part  being  in  some  degree 
characteristic ;  but  in  double  flowers  he 
knows  little  except  from  the  calyx  or  the 
herbage,  or  something  that  is  left  unal- 
tered. Now,  of  course,  the  beauty  is 
degraded  in  proportion  to  this  loss  of 
character. 

NOTE  i 

A  highly  cultivated  Pansy  or  Geranium 
of  necessity   loses   much    of  its    original 
164 


On  Gardeners'  Flowers 

character  in  the  rounding  out  of  the 
petals.  Now  as  native  character  is  al- 
most always  beautiful  and  impressive, 
its  loss  must  be  reckoned  serious.  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  we  must  take  into 
account  what  the  plant  has  gained  both 
in  character  and  beauty.  See  how  many 
new  elements  have  arisen  in  the  highly 
cultivated  shape,  which  were  almost  or 
altogether  undiscernible  in  the  wild  flower. 
See  how  many  old  elements  have  acquired 
new  emphasis  and  power,  which  perhaps 
had  but  little  meaning  till  they  were  em- 
bodied in  a  fuller  form.  And  where 
cultivation  even  seems  to  have  diluted 
the  wild  shape,  a  certain  boldness  and 
dignity  come  in  to  atone  for  it.  And 
thus  the  balance  of  losses  and  gains  is, 
in  many  plants,  extremely  difficult  to 
settle.  You  feel  that  each  has  its  in- 
trinsic excellences.  The  round  outline 
of  the  cultivated  Pansy  is  unmeaning  as 
compared  with  that  of  the  wild  flower, 
whilst  the  wild  flower  looks  poor  beside 
the  garden  one.  Yet  in  laying  great 
stress  upon  the  importance  of  character, 
it  must  not  be  thought  that  any  character 
is  valuable  which  depends  upon  mere 
weakness  or  deficiency.  Difference  of 
character  must  point  to  a  different  style 
165 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

of  beauty,  or  it  becomes  most  wholly 
worthless,  and  real  gain  in  beauty  must 
atone  for  any  such  loss.  But  why  is  the 
gardener  in  such  risk  of  learning  to  dis- 
like the  special  characters  of  the  unculti- 
vated flower  ?  Simply  because  his  labour 
is  for  the  most  part  directed  to  efface 
them,  to  supplant  that  style  of  beauty 
by  the  opposite.  Yet  it  is  not  always 
so,  as  we  see  from  the  hothouse  Orchids. 


NOTE  2 

The  gardener,  then,  is  an  artist  who 
interprets  Nature  by  showing  her  full 
capabilities,  by  carrying  out  any  beautiful 
tendency  whatsoever  of  a  plant  to  its 
fullest  consummation.  It  is  a  work  not 
only  of  evolution,  but  of  change.  He 
sometimes  appears  principally  to  be  en- 
larging the  native  form,  and  displaying 
it  to  better  advantage  ;  but  he  frequently 
must  alter  it  altogether,  as  in  the  double 
flowers,  and  replace  it  by  something  new. 
His  creations  are,  therefore,  often  neces- 
sarily very  one-sided,  and  apt  to  be  much 
influenced  by  caprices  of  novelty  and 
fancy,  so  that  it  is  well  to  counterbalance 
their  effect  upon  the  mind  by  an  habitual 
study  of  wild  plants.  But  it  is  only  when 
166 


On  Gardeners'  Flowers 

he  tempts  us,  any  more  than  he  necessarily 
must,  to  narrow  down  our  tastes,  or  wil- 
fully leads  us  to  prefer  the  lower  to  the 
higher,  or  carries  out  evil  tendencies  as 
to  faulty  colouring  or  shape,  that  we  must 
hold  him  justly  to  blame. 

But  with  reference  to  losses  from 
cultivation,  is  the  gardener  always  neces- 
sarily one-sided  ?  May  he  not  raise  a 
plant,  without  material  loss  of  any  kind, 
to  a  higher  order  of  beauty  ?  Theoreti- 
cally it  appears  by  no  means  easy  to  say. 
Even  if  it  were  a  mere  question  of  size, 
can  a  plant  be  quite  perfect  that  is 
designed  for  being  two  feet  high,  if  it 
can  be  raised  without  any  loss  to  three 
or  four?  How  should  we  like  our  Snow- 
drops and  Harebells  to  be  of  twice  the 
present  size  ?  On  the  contrary,  if  the 
plant  is  improved  by  enlargement  of  the 
blossom,  with  or  without  corresponding 
diminution  of  the  foliage,  would  not  this 
show  that  the  blossom  had  originally  been 
too  small?  It  might  be  answered,  of 
course,  that  some  forms  have  dwindled 
or  deteriorated,  and  may  be  restored  by 
giving  them  the  advantages  they  require. 
But  this  will  not  be  the  usual  -case.  In 
general,  where  the  wild  plant  seems  really 
inferior,  we  shall  probably  find  that  the 
167 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

inferior  form  is  best  suited  to  its  native 
home,  and  is  the  more  beautiful  of  the 
two  in  the  place  where  it  was  intended 
to  grow.  Nevertheless  we  may  justly 
say  that  cultivation  has  raised  it  when 
the  question  of  this  local  relationship  is 
set  aside.  In  itself  we  do  not  prefer  the 
little  stunted  yew-tree,  and  yet  it  looks 
better  high  up  upon  the  mountain  crags 
than  would  the  finest  growth  of  the  valley. 
I  think  that  the  Meadow  Cowslips,  with 
all  their  irregularities  (I  do  not  mean  the 
irregularities  seen  in  actually  bad  speci- 
mens, with  perhaps  three  flowers  to  a 
head),  would  be  ill  replaced  by  better- 
grown  ones ;  and  this  could  hardly  be 
understood  from  seeing  the  plants  in  a 
garden  where  the  original  significance  of 
their  peculiarities  is  no  longer  to  be  seen. 
The  loose,  straggling  appearance  of  many 
a  weed  is  very  valuable  in  the  hedge  or 
on  pieces  of  waste  ground.  Every  mass 
of  weeds  has  its  compacter  plants  as  well 
as  its  looser,  and  it  is  the  blending  of 
the  two  which  makes  the  beauty.  I  have 
already  pointed  out  how  the  Anthriscus 
sylvestris  redeems  from  flatness  the  long 
levels  of  the  mowing  grass.  Alter  it  in 
any  respect,  even  by  enlarging  its  flowers, 
and  you  would  injure  it, — the  loose  misty 
168 


On  Gardeners'  Flowers 

effect  would  be  destroyed.  And  how 
should  we  like  the  meadow  grass  itself 
to  have  fuller  ears,  and  to  grow  as  stout 
as  corn  ?  Yet  if  such  plants  were  in  a 
garden,  their  defects  would  be  real  ones, 
through  having  lost  their  meaning,  and 
we  should  thank  cultivation  for  removing 
them.  Now,  to  speak  more  practically,  be 
all  this  as  it  may,  the  effects  of  cultivation 
seem  often  greatly  beneficial,  without  pro- 
ducing any  material  loss.  They  add  fresh 
beauty  to  the  flower,  whilst  detracting 
but  little  from  its  native  stores.  And 
yet,  in  making  a  fair  estimate,  we  should 
remember  that  it  is  often  difficult  to  be 
sure  that  what  we  know  as  the  wild  plant 
is  the  genuine  thing,  and  not  some  stunted 
variety.  For  instance,  that  wretched  little 
Pansy  of  our  corn-fields,  in  which  the 
petals  are  almost  abortive,  is  botanically 
identical  with  the  real  Wild  Pansy,  which 
in  favourable  situations  is  a  very  pretty 
flower.  And  I  had  long  been  in  the 
habit  of  setting  down  Lamium  amplcxi- 
caule  as  remarkably  unattractive,  apart 
from  its  botanical  interest.  But  I  was 
surprised  to  find  that  Anne  Pratt  con- 
sidered it  the  prettiest  of  the  genus,  and 
I  see  what  she  means  from  the  figure 
she  gives.  Again,  we  must  never  be  too 
169 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

sure  that  we  have  not  overlooked  some 
important  loss,  and  the  caution  is  more 
needed  because  the  improvements  will 
always  be  showy.  I  think,  then,  we  may 
assert  these  three  positions  :  Firstly, 
there  are  many  plants,  like  Broom,  Gorse, 
Foxglove,  Hawthorn,  Columbine,  which 
seem  to  be  absolutely  perfect,  in  which 
it  would  scarcely  be  possible  to  conceive 
of  an  improvement  which  would  raise 
the  plant  as  a  whole.  You  may  produce 
new  beauty  by  varying  them,  by  making 
the  Hawthorn  scarlet,  or  the  Foxglove 
white,  but  you  cannot  actually  raise  them. 
Secondly,  there  is  another  set  of  plants 
in  which  the  improvements  from  cultiva- 
tion are  so  marked  as  to  be  unmistakable, 
and  seemingly  unattended  with  any  loss 
worth  mentioning.  Such  are  Wallflowers, 
many  Larkspurs,  the  large  varieties  of 
the  Dog's-Tooth  Violet  and  Grape  Hya- 
cinth, our  ordinary  fruits  and  many  kitchen 
vegetables,  as  rhubarb,  fennel,  or  aspa- 
ragus, and  probably  corn  of  all  kinds. 
Indeed,  never  could  the  advantages  of 
cultivation  be  better  seen  than  in  our 
fruits.  In  the  plum,  the  apple,  the  pear, 
what  a  variety  of  noble  character  has 
been  created!  Nevertheless,  it  must  be 
remembered  that  in  some  flowers,  as  the 
170 


On  Gardeners'  Flowers 

Wallflower,  still  higher  cultivation  will 
finally  alter  the  shape,  producing  that 
large  lax  type  of  petal  to  which  we  have 
already  alluded,  as  one  in  which  the  form 
seems  almost  escaping  from  its  bounds  ; 
though  even  this  change  may  be  valuable 
as  the  source  of  much  new  beauty. 
Thirdly,  there  are  plants  in  which,  though 
the  flower  may  be  greatly  bettered  by 
cultivation,  there  is  clear  and  serious  loss, 
as  in  the  Pansies  and  Geraniums  from 
which  we  originally  started. 

NOTE  3 

But  is  the  work  of  Nature  always  per- 
fect ?  Not  always  of  the  highest  type  of 
beauty  certainly,  for  that  was  never  in- 
tended. And  there  are  many  instances 
in  which  it  is  difficult  to  see  the  reason 
of  the  imperfection.  What  a  repulsive 
smell  the  Daffodil  has !  You  would  have 
thought  that  something  would  have  been 
selected  more  consistent  with  the  appear- 
ance of  that  lively  flower.  It  is  the  same 
with  some  other  of  the  Narcissuses.  And 
there  is  a  species  of  Fritillary  (F.  pyre- 
naica),  one  of  the  most  graceful  of  all 
our  spring  plants,  in  which  the  rich  varie- 
gated brown  would  lead  us  to  expect  a 
171 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

sweet  sugary  or  treacly  odour,  but,  on  the 
contrary,  we  find  a  smell  even  more  dis- 
gusting than  the  Daffodil's.  The  Starch 
Grape  Hyacinth,  too  (Muscari  racemosum), 
remarkable  for  the  fruity  hue  of  its  beaded 
blossoms,  whose  flowers  rub  together  with 
a  crisp  glassy  feel,  like  that  of  a  bunch  of 
Bluebell  stalks,  when  we  press  the  spike 
betwixt  the  fingers,  is  in  this  respect  the 
same.  Why  should  it  be  so  ?  On  the 
other  hand,  there  are  thousands  upon 
thousands  of  flowers  in  which  the  least 
shortcoming  of  perfect  beauty  cannot  be 
detected  by  the  most  critical  eye.  The 
thorns  of  the  Rose  or  Thistle  are  of 
course  no  imperfections  at  all,  but  right 
and  very  beautiful  in  their  place. 

NOTE  4 

When  any  flower  has  attracted  unusual 
attention,  as  has  been  the  case  for  the 
last  two  or  three  hundred  years  with  the 
Tulip,  the  cultivator  is  somewhat  at  a 
loss  for  special  means  of  excitement.  He 
then  becomes  a  complete  sensationalist. 
Sometimes  he  will  try  to  gain  notice  by 
gigantic  size,  the  fine  vase-like  curvatures 
of  the  Tulip  being  replaced  perhaps  by  a 
monstrous  broadly  open  cup  shape,  as 
172 


On  Gardeners'  Flowers 

seen  in  Mrs.  Loudon's  plate  ("  Ladies' 
Ornamental  Flower  Garden,  Bulbous 
Plants").  Sometimes  he  will  try  by  all 
sorts  of  eccentricity  in  the  markings, 
colours  being  dashed  together  without 
any  pretence  of  harmony.  And  still 
further  disturbance  may  be  produced  by 
the  idiotic  freaks  of  fashion,  the  shape 
which  is  right  to-day  being  wrong  to- 
morrow, and  perhaps  right  again  in  twenty 
years  to  come.  Now  the  Tulip  is  a  flower 
which  ill  bears  to  be  trifled  with.  Under 
cultivation  it  easily  becomes  stiff  and 
gaudy,  and  the  utmost  possible  care  is 
needed  to  make  it  look  well.  The  origi- 
nal Tulipa  Gesneriana  I  only  know  from 
plates,  and  it  is  unsafe  to  draw  compari- 
sons from  these.  But  the  cultivated  plant 
with  all  its  splendour  is  seldom  perfectly 
pleasing ;  and  this  is  certainly  largely  due 
to  the  one-sided  modes  of  training,  which 
seek  after  display  alone.  All  our  Tulips 
must  be  fitted  for  the  show-bed.  Now  I 
had  a  garden  Tulip  this  spring  which 
greatly  impressed  me  by  its  severe  and 
simple  beauty.  In  the  shape  this  was 
particularly  noticeable.  The  corolla  in  its 
lower  part  filled  out  roundly  and  delicately 
like  an  urn,  then  somewhat  contracted 
upwards,  and  again  curved  outwards  at 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

the  points  of  the  three  outer  and  narrower 
sepals,  thus  clearly  distinguishing  them 
from  the  three  inner  broader  and  blunter 
petals,  whose  tips  were  directed  inwards. 
The  corolla  was  not  large,  and  therefore 
required  no  stout  stiff  stem  to  support 
it ;  the  stem  had,  in  fact,  just  that  slight 
amount  of  curvature  which  would  redeem 
it  from  the  appearance  of  formality.  The 
colour  was  a  fresh  honey  yellow,  beautiful 
in  itself,  and  well  adapted  to  the  form. 
It  is  difficult  to  recognise  species  in  these 
garden  plants ;  but  I  think  that  this  is 
very  likely  to  have  been  one  of  the  com- 
mon May  Tulips  amongst  which  it  grew  : 
yet  in  the  highest  beauty,  and  in  character 
what  a  difference  ! *  Such  flowers  may  not 
be  fitted  for  display  in  a  bed,  but  scat- 
tered here  and  there  in  twos  and  threes 
amongst  the  other  plants,  they  will  im- 
press us  as  no  other  Tulips  can.  I  believe 
that  this  kind  of  Tulip  is  common  in  our 
cottage  gardens,  and  therefore  I  have 
noticed  it. 

The  cultivated  form  of  Gesneriana  is 
often  exceedingly  fine  when  well  rounded 

1  [The  Tulip  so  accurately  described  is  T.  retroflexa, 
certainly  one  of  the  most  elegant  of  the  family.  The  re- 
curved petals  suggest  a  connection  with  the  wild  Tulip, 
T.  sylvestris,  but  it  is  not  allied  to  it,  and  its  origin  is 
unknown.— H.  N.  E.] 

174 


On  Gardeners'  Flowers 

below,  and  allowed  to  curve  upwards 
naturally.  The  waved  streaks  then  assist 
the  form.  Tulips,  too,  look  much  less 
stiff  when  allowed  to  send  up  a  sprout  or 
two  from  the  principal  bulb,  and  ordinary 
garden  Tulips  can  easily  afford  to  do  so. 

NOTE  5 

One  of  the  very  worst  symptoms  of  our 
modern  taste  is  its  love  of  variegated 
foliage.  Leaves  are  the  shadow  of  the 
plant ;  their  colour  needs  essentially 
breadth  and  repose,  as  a  foil  to  the  light 
of  the  flowers.  It  is  true  that  Nature 
will  now  and  then  give  us  leaf  colouring 
of  rare  and  delicate  beauty,  like  that  of 
the  Cissus,  or  many  kinds  of  tinting  in 
purple  and  red ;  but  still  the  main  effect 
is  nearly  always  quiet  and  subdued.  Now 
look  at  our  summer  flower-beds  ;  look  at 
that  Scarlet  Geranium  whose  leaf  edges 
are  broadly  buttered  round  with  cream 
colour  (I  can  use  no  other  term  which 
will  express  the  vulgarity  of  the  effect) ; 
consider  first  the  harshness  of  the  leaf 
colouring  in  itself,  then  its  want  of  relation 
to  the  form,  and  finally  what  a  degrada- 
tion this  is  of  the  clear,  beautiful,  and 
restful  contrast  which  we  find  in  the  plain 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

Scarlet  Geranium,  and  then  ask  yourself 
what  that  taste  can  be  where  this  is  not 
only  tolerated,  but  admired.  We  may 
perhaps  obtain  a  really  beautiful  leaf,  like 
that  Geranium  leaf  with  variously  coloured 
borders  in  which  a  coppery  tint  prevails  ; 
but  all  this  is  essentially  an  imitation  of 
withering,  and  wherever  such  plants  come 
in  largely,  their  colour  must  produce  the 
effects  of  withering,  making  beds  look  as 
if  they  were  blighted.  But  this  is  only 
one  example  of  the  thousand  discords 
which  are  coming  into  favour  now.  The 
gardener  here  has  entered  a  radically 
erroneous  path,  and  there  will  be  little 
but  baseness  in  the  results.  How  often 
do  we  see  the  colours  of  a  bed  completely 
frittered  away  amidst  contrasts  of  leaves 
which  are  spotted  and  streaked  into  every 
sort  of  deformity  !  That  which  is  excep- 
tional in  Nature  is  made  the  rule,  the 
rule  narrowed  down  into  the  exception. 
How  can  breadth  of  effect,  or  anything 
but  the  utmost  frivolity,  be  possibly  gained 
by  means  of  such  barbarous  plants  as 
these  ?  And  some  of  the  large  tropical 
Arums  (Aracetz)  of  the  hothouse,  I  know 
not  whether  naturally  or  as  the  result  of 
art,  are  as  harsh  as  anything  I  have 
named,  green  grounds  peppered  thickly 
176 


On  Gardeners'  Flowers 

over  with  bright  red,  or  tricksily  wrought 
out  in  cream  colour.  Occasional  variega- 
tion in  the  leaves  is  now  and  then  pleasing, 
though  this  can  hardly  ever  be  the  case 
where  plants  bear  brilliant  flowers.  Thus 
I  like  to  see  the  Variegated  Holly,  or  the 
creamy  stripes  of  Ribbon  Grass.  These 
last  are  especially  beautiful,  because  fol- 
lowing the  form  of  the  leaf,  instead  of 
breaking  it  up  like  the  Geranium  white- 
wash I  have  mentioned.  But  the  grass 
has  no  coloured  flowers  to  spoil.  And 
observe,  when  the  berries  appear  upon  the 
Variegated  Holly  how  inferior  its  effect 
becomes.  We  wish  for  the  green  leaves 
then.  Amongst  other  leaf  deformities, 
who  has  not  noticed  that  hedgehog-leaved 
Holly,  where  the  flat  surface  of  the  leaf  is 
trained  to  put  forth  prickles  ? 1  What  pos- 
sible beauty  can  there  be  in  this?  High 
cultivation  will  always  have  its  dangers,  a 
tendency  to  strain  after  new  effects  of  any 
sort,  as  witness  the  abominable  colours  of 
some  of  the  most  highly  trained  Pansies  in 
our  markets ;  but  high  cultivation,  when  once 
started,  as  in  the  case  of  this  variegated 
foliage,  upon  tracks  which  are  radically 
wrong,  can  only  produce  evil  without  end. 

1  [The  Hedgehog  Holly  is  not  a  trained  form  ;  it  is  a 
wild  variety  of  the  Common  Holly.— H.  N.  E.] 

177  M 


Flowers  and  Gardens 


NOTE  6 

I  will  give  one  instance  of  Nature's  care 
for  the  look  of  the  stamens  and  pistils  of  a 
flower.  In  the  blossom  of  the  Scented 
Violet  the  stamens  form  by  their  conver- 
gence a  little  orange  beak.  At  the  end 
of  this  beak  is  the  summit  of  the  pistil,  a 
tiny  speck  of  green,  but  barely  visible  to 
the  naked  eye.  Yet,  small  as  it  is,  it 
completes  the  colour  of  the  flower,  by 
softening  the  orange,  and  we  can  dis- 
tinctly see  that  if  this  mere  point  were 
removed,  there  would  be  imperfection  for 
the  want  of  it 

NOTE   7 

To  any  one  who  looks  at  the  extra- 
ordinary beauty  of  the  best  garden  Roses, 
at  the  sweetness  and  delicacy  of  the  tint- 
ing, the  delicious  fragrance,  and  the  large 
nobility  of  form,  my  remarks,  so  far  as 
applying  to  them,  may  at  first  sight  seem 
very  rash.  And  if  any  exception  could 
exist  to  what  I  have  said,  it  would  certainly 
be  found  in  the  Rose.  The  flower  has  a 
something  almost  human  about  it, — warm, 
breathing,  soft  as  the  fairest  cheek ;  if 
178 


On  Gardeners'  Flowers 

white,  no  longer  snowy  like  the  Narcissus, 
but  flushed  with  hues  of  animating  pink  ; 
either  flower,  white  or  red,  being  alike 
symbolical  of  growing  youthful  passion. 
Nowhere  else  has  the  sensuous  in  a  double 
flower  such  strength  of  imaginative  appeal. 
But  we  must  remember, — firstly,  as  to 
sensuous  qualities,  that  we  have  only  made 
comparison  with  our  native  hedge  Rose, 
and  not  with  the  original  of  the  garden 
plant  in  a  single  state,  and  developed  by 
cultivation.  Secondly,  it  is  admitted  that 
the  double  flower  may  far  excel  in  par- 
ticular kinds  of  effect,  the  various  beauties 
of  the  single  being  restrained  by  mutual 
concession  to  give  best  effect  to  the  flower 
as  a  whole.  Thus  the  higher  you  cultivate 
the  common  Pink  the  less  has  it  of  ani- 
mated expression  :  there  is,  consequently, 
more  of  this  expression  in  the  best  double 
Pinks  of  the  cottage  garden,  least  of  all  in 
the  splendid  Carnations  I  have  already 
described,  which  are  just  like  gorgeous 
patterns.  Now  the  best  double  flowers 
do  certainly  gain  much  in  dignity,  one  of 
the  highest  of  all  possible  qualities.  And 
in  their  own  especial  kind  of  dignity  the 
single  flowers  can  never  vie  with  them. 
These  last  can  give  us  the  dignity  of  the 
open  empty  cup,  as  we  see  in  the  common 
179 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

Lilies  and  Water-lilies,  but  they  can  never 
fill  the  cup  and  expand  it  into  a  head, 
because  that  would  spoil  the  stamens,  which 
are  the  life  and  light  of  the  whole.  Yet 
not  even  here  are  the  single  flowers  to  be 
considered  as  driven  from  the  field.  What 
they  cannot  do  separately  they  can  when 
united  in  a  mass.  The  heads  of  the 
larger  Rhododendrons  can  vie  even  with 
the  double  Peonies  in  majesty,  and  have, 
besides,  that  life  which  the  Peony  lacks. 
But  this  kind  of  dignity  is  comparatively 
rare  amongst  single  flowers,  whilst  it  is  the 
especial  boast  of  the  better  class  of  the 
double.  The  lower  double  flowers  aim 
chiefly  at  a  patterned  neatness,  as  we  see 
in  the  Hepatica,  the  white  Wood  Anemone, 
the  white  Ranunculus,  and  others.  Not- 
withstanding this  confession,  we  must  not 
be  too  hasty,  and  say  that  this  kind  of 
dignity  cannot  be  found  at  all  in  the  single 
flowers  taken  separately.  There  is  some- 
thing approaching  it  in  the  Iris,  and  other 
such  blossoms  where  the  stamens  lie  con- 
cealed. Blossoms  of  this  sort  more  nearly 
approximate  to  double  ones  in  their  effect. 
They  give  up  expression  for  magnificence, 
and  gloriously  lovely  as  they  are — for  I 
think  few  plants  are  lovelier  than  the  Irises 
— we  feel  here  an  inferiority  to  the  open 
180 


On  Gardeners'  Flowers 

flowers.  But  mark  particularly  how  the 
Iris  differs  from  a  double  blossom,  how 
much  more  preciseness  of  aim  there  is  in 
the  parts,  a  few  grandly  managed  elements 
most  carefully  individualised,  and  how 
comparatively  slight  is  the  tendency  to 
repetition.  In  the  double  flower,  on  the 
contrary,  we  are  struck  by  the  comparative 
feebleness  of  plan.  There  is  constant 
repetition,  the  petals  crowded  together 
numberless,  and  with  far  less  care  for  the 
individuals,  which  in  many  cases  melt  up 
into  almost  shapeless  confusion,  and  can 
only  be  looked  at  in  the  mass,  as  in  the 
double  Tulip  and  Hollyhock.  This  marks, 
of  course,  a  certain  deterioration  of  char- 
acter. Whenever,  on  the  contrary,  the 
parts  are  more  cared  for,  they  begin  to 
give  a  look  of  stiffness,  because  there  are 
too  many  of  a  similar  kind.  The  Carnation 
and  Dahlia,  for  instance,  have  much  the 
effect  of  patterns. 

NOTE  8 

As  the  result  of  that  wish  for  large 
size  which  every  gardener  approves,  we 
find  that  highly  cultivated  flowers  are  apt 
to  have  a  look  of  weakness.  The  plant 
impresses  us  as  soft,  loose,  nerveless, 
181 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

and  as  certain  to  be  injured  by  the 
least  untoward  circumstance.  It  is  often 
unable  to  stand  in  its  own  unassisted 
strength,  and  needs  all  kinds  of  artificial 
protection  and  support.  And  this  is 
because  the  healthy  balance  is  destroyed, 
because  one  part  is  cultivated  out  of  pro- 
portion to,  and  therefore  to  the  disad- 
vantage of,  the  rest.  As  compared  with 
wild  plants,  it  is  like  some,  sleek,  fattened- 
up  domestic  animal  beside  the  wild  or 
well -worked  creature  with  its  sinewy 
limbs,  and  scarce  a  particle  of  super- 
abundant flesh.  All  that  you  see  in  the 
latter  is  needed  for  activity  or  strength. 
Now  wild  plants  require  no  artificial 
support,  their  fabric  is  justly  proportioned, 
and  they  can  therefore  stand  without 
finding  their  own  weight  burdensome. 
When  we,  therefore,  look  at  the  blossom- 
laden  Fuchsia  in  a  flower-show,  which 
requires  a  prop  for  every  limb,  however 
we  may  admire  the  beauty  of  the  flowers, 
let  us  never  forget  how  artificial  such 
treatment  is,  how  altogether  incompatible 
with  a  well-balanced  perfection  of  the 
plant.  What  should  we  think  of  such 
a  system  of  training  applied  to  human 
beings,  which  gave  large  intellect  and 
a  noble  countenance  at  the  expense  of 
182 


On  Gardeners'  Flowers 

a  debilitated  frame?  You  may  say  that 
the  cases  are  not  precisely  parallel,  be- 
cause in  man  the  general  health  would 
here  be  deranged,  while  in  plants  it  is 
not  necessarily  so.  But  supposing  that 
the  general  health  could  be  equally  un- 
affected in  man,  would  that  make  any 
difference?  Would  these  mental  ad- 
vantages be  well  bought  for  a  nation 
at  that  large  expense  of  physical  ?  Yet 
I  do  not  condemn  this  mode  of  flower 
training  when  it  effects  any  worthy  im- 
provements, provided  always  that  these 
highly  cultivated  forms  are  not  allowed 
to  drive  out  the  others. 

We  sometimes  find  an  author  speaking 
of  branches  .breaking  down  under  their 
load  of  fruit  as  if  he  considered  this  a 
beauty.  It  is  just  as  much  beautiful  or 
desirable  as  to  see  the  body  destroyed 
by  an  over-activity  of  the  brain. 


183 


PART   III 
VEGETATION 


Spring  and  Summer  Vegetation 

THERE  is  a  characteristic  differ- 
ence betwixt  the  earlier  and  the 
later  flowering  plants  in  the  mode 
of  putting  forth  their  blossoms. 
Trees  or  shrubs  of  the  later  type  seem 
generally  to  prefer  to  develop  these 
blossoms  from  the  extremity  of  a  lengthy 
shoot ;  in  the  later  examples  of  the  type, 
such  as  the  Clematis  or  Rose,  no  trace 
of  flower-buds  appearing  till  the  shoot 
has  nearly  perfected  its  leaves.1  In 
earlier  examples,  however,  like  the  Horse 
Chestnut  or  the  Lilac,  the  flower-buds 
are  distinctly  visible  from  the  first,  and 
come  to  perfection  almost  simultaneously 
with  the  foliage,  or  in  other  cases  even 
a  little  sooner,  so  that  the  plant  when 
in  bloom  has  an  unfinished  half-developed 

1  By  "shoot"  I  mean  the  stem  of  this  year's  growth, 
as  contrasted  with  the  branch,  which  comes  from  some 
former  year. 

187 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

look.  It  is  altogether  different  in  the 
case  of  those  trees  and  shrubs  which 
flower  in  the  early  spring.  Here  the 
blossom,  instead  of  being  borne  upon 
a  shoot,  is  put  forth  close  upon  the 
branches.  In  the  common  Hazel,  for 
instance,  or  in  the  yellow  Cornus  mas 
of  the  shrubberies,  it  lies  all  the  winter 
just  ready  for  unfolding,  and  then  opens 
at  once  before  a  leaf  is  visible.  As 
the  season  advances,  we  find  blossoms 
upon  longer  stalks,  and  accompanied  by 
a  few  young  sprouting  leaves  ;  or  perhaps, 
as  in  the  flowering  Currant,  they  appear 
amidst  a  general  bursting  of  the  leaf- 
buds,  so  that  the  plant  when  in  bloom 
has  the  unfinished,  half-developed  look 
of  which  we  have  already  spoken.  The 
wild  Sloe,  or  cultivated  Plum,  the  Elm, 
Mezereon,  and  the  early  Willows,  will  fur- 
nish us  with  other  examples  of  this  type.1 

And  what  has  been  said  of  trees  and 
shrubs  will  hold  good  also  of  the  her- 
baceous plants.  In  the  first  few  months 
of  the  year,  we  do  not  so  commonly  find 
arising  a  loose,  much-branching,  leafy 
structure,  like  that  of  the  Buttercups,  or 

1  [There  are  some  marked  exceptions  to  this  type,  as 
in    Laurustinus,  Box,  Agara,  Daphne   Blagayana,   &c., 
which   bear  their  flowers  in  early  spring  and  when  the 
shrubs  are  in  full  leaf. — H.  N.  E.] 
188 


Spring  and  Summer  Vegetation 

the  Um  belli  ferae  (Hemlockworts),  and 
other  of  the  later  bloomers.  We  have  a 
greater  number  of  those  low,  compactly 
built  plants,  such  as  the  Dandelion,  Colts- 
foot, Violet,  and  Daffodil,  whose  flowers 
come  straight  from  the  root,  and  seem  as 
if  they  had  been  placed  there  just  ready 
for  unfolding.  And  in  plants  of  a  different 
description,  as  the  Water  -  Blob  (Caltha 
palustris),  which  gilds  the  early  marsh 
with  such  sudden  splendour,  or  the  Ground 
Ivy  and  Chickweed,  there  is  a  marked 
tendency  to  assume  a  like  general  aspect. 

Now  what  is  the  object  of  this  charac- 
teristic difference  of  type  ?  In  the  first 
place,  evidently,  that  in  the  early  flowerers 
the  bloom  should  be  evolved  as  rapidly 
and  with  as  little  preliminary  effort  as  pos- 
sible. The  earlier  the  plant  has  to  blossom, 
the  less  work  it  must  have  to  do  before 
the  blossom  is  put  forth.  Besides,  longer 
stalks  or  leafy  shoots  would  expose  a  larger 
surface  unnecessarily  to  the  cold.  And 
this  might  prove  injurious  to  even  the 
hardiest  plants,  as  we  often  see  the  foliage 
of  the  Elder  and  of  other  trees  early  in 
their  leaf  suffering  most  severely  in  the 
biting  winds  of  March.  In  the  second 
place,  by  this  arrangement  all  undue  inter- 
ference is  prevented,  so  that  everything  in 
189 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

its  season  may  appear  at  full  advantage. 
Blossoms  in  the  summer-time  would  be  in 
danger  of  being  hidden  by  the  leaves  if 
they  came  forth  close  upon  the  branches. 
This  type  is  accordingly  made  to  belong 
characteristically  to  the  season  in  which 
leaves  are  imperfectly  developed,  and  the 
summer  blossoms  are  generally  placed 
upon  stalks  which  carry  them  beyond  the 
foliage.  Arrangements  of  the  same  sort 
for  preventing  interference  hold  every- 
where in  the  kingdom  of  plants.  The 
humbler  must  come  forth  first,  where  the 
higher  would  rise  up  to  veil  them,  and 
must,  therefore,  principally  belong  to  an 
early  season  of  the  year.  The  early  spring 
flowers  would  be  little  noticed  if  they  came 
first  in  the  deep  grass  of  May  or  June. 
Daisies  may  be  found  there,  it  is  true,  but 
not  those  rich  milky  stars  which  dapple 
the  soft  blue-green  of  the  April  meadows ; 
the  little  Celandine  is  gone,  the  golden 
day-fires  of  the  Dandelion  have  lost  their 
brightness,  and  it  has  almost  ceased  to 
burn  even  like  a  pale  candle  in  the  grass. 
Any  of  these  flowers  may  linger,  but  their 
early  loveliness  is  fled.1  We  find  the  same 
thing  again  in  the  woodlands.  There  is 

1  Daisies  are  both   common   and  beautiful  in   early 
summer.      In   the  month   of  May  their   numbers    are 
190 


Spring  and  Summer  Vegetation 

no  interference  there,  except  such  as  con- 
stitutes an  advantage.  -  That  rich  carpet 
of  Anemone,  Violet,  and  Primrose  might 
be  choked  by  the  thick  undergrowth  if  it 
bloomed  in  the  summer  time,  or  be  too 
much  veiled  by  the  foliage  of  the  trees  if 
that  were  developed  earlier.  But  as  it  is, 
in  early  spring  the  slight  shade  of  the 
naked  boughs  gives  warmth  and  protec- 
tion, so  that  the  flowers  can  come  forth 
sooner,  and  possess  a  beauty  which  is 
wanting  in  less  sheltered  spots.  Look, 
for  instance,  at  those  splendid  Violets, 
large-flowered,  long-stalked,  which  we  find 
growing  in  the  woods,  or  compare  the 
wide-eyed  woodland  Anemones,  in  all 
their  ethereal  loveliness,  with  those  which 
blossom  in  the  open  fields. 

Then,  again,  the  full  summer  heat  has  a 
mischievous  influence  upon  many  of  the 
woodland  plants.  We  notice,  for  example, 
in  a  garden  that  the  much-exposed  Prim- 
roses are  often  damaged  in  the  summer, 
and  never  have  the  same  beautiful  appear- 
ance as  those  which  grow  under  proper 
cover.  So  it  has  been  wisely  arranged 
that  the  leafy  canopy  of  the  woods  shall 

greatly  increased,  but  they  have  become  of  far  less  abso- 
lute importance,  are  crowded  by  the  other  plants,  and 
never  can  rival  the  beauty  of  the  April  meadow-flower. 
191 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

just  thicken  in  proportion  as  the  sun  gains 
strength,  in  order  that  there  his  rays  may 
be  ever  tempered  and  subdued,  and  de- 
prived of  their  power  to  injure.  And  thus 
in  the  woods  these  early  spring  flowers 
gain  every  advantage  from  their  position 
and  time  of  blooming.  The  soil  at  their 
roots  is  kept  uniformly  moist,  and  they  are 
sheltered,  not  from  necessary  light,  but 
only  from  hurtful  extremes  of  heat  and 
cold. 

The  third  advantage  of  this  low  com- 
pactness of  growth  which  characterises  the 
early  spring  is  the  readiness  with  which  it 
enables  the  land  to  be  wrought  upon  by 
the  weather.  In  winter  there  is  the  utmost 
possible  bareness.  The  heavy  sodden 
earth  must  be  exposed  to  be  cracked  and 
riven  by  the  frost,  after  which  the  air  can 
freely  enter  and  reanimate  it.  But  when 
frost  and  snow  are  at  length  disappearing 
the  work  is  only  half  complete.  The 
country  has  yet  to  be  ventilated  and 
washed.  The  earth  is  still  being  tem- 
pered by  rapid  alternations  of  heat  and 
cold,  the  pouring  rains  and  melting  snows 
drench  it,  and  are  again  dried  up  by  the 
searching  east  winds.  We  can  scarcely 
say  that  the  work  is  accomplished  till  the 
time — 

192 


Spring  and  Summer  Vegetation 

"  Whan  that  Aprille  with  his  shoures  soote 
The  droghte  of  Marche  hath  perced  to  the  roote, 
And  bathed  every  veyne  in  swich  licour, 
Of  which  vertu  engendred  is  the  flour  "- 

Chaucer's  April  being  twelve  days  later 
than  ours,  and  the  March  drought  of 
which  he  speaks  concluding  with  those 
dry  east  winds  which  we  so  often  get  at 
the  beginning  of  the  former  month.  Now 
it  is  evident  that  all  this  work  will  be 
greatly  impeded  by  thick  abundant  vege- 
tation, and  that  loose,  branching,  long- 
stalked  vegetation  would  itself  sustain 
much  damage.  Plants  never  tend  to 
assume  this  latter  character  on  the  higher 
parts  of  mountains,  or  on  open  heaths  or 
moorlands,  or  anywhere  else  where  the 
winds  play  freely.  And  so  the  neces- 
sities of  Nature  lead  to  one  of  the  most 
striking  features  of  the  scenery  of  spring, 
its  openness  and  compactness.  Every- 
thing is  free,  and  pervious  to  sun  and  air. 
We  never  get  that  feeling  of  seclusion, 
of  being  covered  in,  so  beautifully  adapted 
to  the  summer  heat,  which  takes  away 
our  activity,  and  makes  us  long  for  rest 
in  the  shade.  Then  we  have  languor, 
meditation,  and  repose.  Now  everything 
is  lively  and  joyous  ;  little  rest  or  lying 
down  in  the  open  air,  for  no  dependence 
193  N 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

can  be  placed  upon  the  weather  and  its 
humours,  the  sunshine  ever  rapidly  alter- 
nating with  the  shower. 

This  compactness  gives  us  a  kind  of 
beauty  which  we  almost  regret  to  lose. 
In  the  spring  garden,  for  instance,  when 
it  chances  to  be  well  managed,  what  an 
exquisite  neatness  in  the  plants,  a  neat- 
ness which  has  no  intrusive  formality  to 
vex  us — those  close  little  tufts  of  Snow- 
drop, Crocus,  Aconite,  or  perhaps  of  the 
later  flowers  like  Dog's-Tooth  Violet  and 
Anemone,  springing  up  amidst  shrubs 
and  bushes  all  sparkling  with  leaf-buds, 
amongst  ground  leaves  of  such  beauty 
that  we  almost  regret  to  think  that  those 
Lupins,  with  their  radiating  star  crystals, 
or  those  bright  young  shoots  of  Monks- 
hood,  will  presently  start  up  and  riot  in 
the  wild  luxuriance  of  summer !  It  is 
the  same  if  we  go  into  the  open  country, 
though  there  we  find  the  withered  wrecks 
of  the  past  year,  which  the  hand  of  art 
has  removed  from  our  gardens.  It  is 
singular  how  little  careful  Nature  shows 
herself  in  some  instances  to  make  her 
work  what  we  should  consider  as  perfect. 
It  is  not  only  that  she  scorns  a  formal 
neatness,  for  every  great  human  artist 
will  do  that,  but  that  actually,  as  a  part 
194 


Spring  and  Summer  Vegetation 

of  her  fundamental  plan,  she  seems  to 
wish  to  enforce  a  lesson  of  imperfection 
and  decay,  to  remind  us  that  the  present 
state  of  things  is  insufficiently  adapted 
to  our  wants,  and  always  transient  and 
underlaid  by  death.  Thus  flowers  might 
easily  have  been  made  to  wither  neatly, 
for  some,  like  the  Gentianella,  actually 
do  so,  resembling  unexpanded  buds,  or 
they  might  have  shrunk  back  into  their 
calyces  almost  unnoticed  amid  the  splen- 
dour of  new-awakening  blossoms.  But 
these  modes  are  exceptions ;  the  contrary 
is  the  rule.  We  were  never  meant  to 
overlook  decay.  We  cannot  help  noticing 
the  disconsolate  aspect  of  the  fruit  trees 
whilst  their  bloom  is  perishing,  or  that 
still  deeper  sadness  which  falls  upon  the 
gardens  when  the  Lilac  fades,  and  the 
gold  of  the  Laburnum  waxes  pale,  and 
the  dirty  -  brown  look  of  the  withering 
Hawthorn  casts  a  momentary  blemish 
upon  every  country  hedgerow.  A  sad- 
ness soon  passing,  it  is  true,  soon  lost  in 
a  sense  of  the  new  beauties  which  are 
everywhere  developing  around  us,  but 
yet  no  less  surely  there.  And  this  im- 
perfection is  no  fault  if  we  do  but  rightly 
understand  it.  It  reminds  us  that  earth 
is  not  the  place  in  which  to  seek  our 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

pleasure,  that  snatches  and  glimpses  of 
true  loveliness  are  sufficient  for  us,  to 
refresh  us,  and  to  tell  us  of  a  better 
world,  and  that  these  imperfect  glimpses 
are  all  that  we  must  expect  to  gain. 
But  what,  after  all,  do  these  blemishes 
amount  to,  when  justly  weighed  against 
the  good  ?  God's  idea  of  the  universe 
may  be  read  in  the  heavens  on  any  starry 
night.  Stand  near  a  town  and  watch 
the  red  lights  in  the  houses,  and  think 
how  much  sin  and  evil  are  dwelling 
there ;  and  then,  quitting  those  mournful 
thoughts,  look  up  to  the  serene,  unblem- 
ished stars.  How  pure,  how  lovely! 
And  yet,  perhaps,  if  we  approached  them 
more  closely,  they  would  be  much  like 
the  world  we  dwell  in,  which  to  them 
seems  just  as  fair.  Is  the  lesson  then 
a  mournful  one,  that  all  things  are  false 
and  hollow,  or  is  it  not  rather  one  of 
unspeakable  joy,  that  sin  and  all  the  evil 
of  existence  shall  thus  vanish  into  insig- 
nificance when  once  set  in  comparison 
with  its  glory,  when  we  shall  be  so  able 
to  contemplate  God's  work  in  its  vaster 
proportions,  as  will  only  be  possible  in 
looking  back  upon  it  from  the  immeasur- 
able distances  of  eternity?  And  so  we 
find  that  the  withered  wrecks  of  dead 
196 


Spring  and  Summer  Vegetation 

plants  are  really  answering  a  purpose  by 
staying  with  us  so  long.  It  would  have 
been  easy  to  have  made  them  disappear 
with  the  approach  of  winter,  but  this 
would  not  have  accorded  with  Nature's 
aims.  They  stand  ugly  till  perhaps  the 
middle  or  end  of  April,  when  faster  decay 
and  the  rapid  advance  of  the  season  clear 
them  off.  And  if  we  study  them  aright 
they  will  really  afford  us  pleasure.  They 
give  quite  a  peculiar  aspect  to  the  country, 
the  new  things  being  made  to  gradually 
replace  the  old.  After  the  frost  and  snow 
have  shattered  the  few  last  remnants  of 
the  summer,  the  fields  are  a  dead,  dull 
expanse,  and  very  sweet  it  is  to  mark  the 
cheerful  green  rising  up  and  conquering 
the  barrenness.  And  though  perhaps  it 
would  be  impossible  to  care  much  for  last 
year's  withered  grass  stalks,  except  as  the 
frail  ghosts  of  departed  friends,  we  may 
certainly  watch  the  bright  green  leaves 
springing  up  in  the  ditches  amongst  the 
old  dry  pipes  of  Hemlock  (Antkriscus, 
&c.),  and  gain  much  pleasure  from  the 
contrast. 


197 


II 

On   the   Withering   of  Plants 

A  PER  seeing  any  flower  for  a  cer- 
tain length  of  time,  we  almost 
necessarily  tire  of  its  beauty. 
This  is  especially  the  case  if  it 
belongs  to  an  uncomfortable  season  of 
the  year.  For  instance,  dearly  as  we 
love  the  Snowdrop,  it  soon  begins  to 
gather  round  it  a  train  of  recollections 
of  cold  and  gloomy  weather,  and  as  we 
look  upon  it  day  after  day,  and  its  first 
charm  loses  force,  these  disagreeable  as- 
sociations gain  ascendency  in  a  like  pro- 
portion. Besides,  each  flower  at  the  time 
of  its  first  appearance  is  adapted  to  fill 
some  characteristic  place  in  the  land- 
scape, but  before  it  passes  away  the 
features  of  the  landscape  have  changed, 
so  as  to  harmonise  more  perfectly  with 
the  newly  entering  generation  of  blos- 
soms, which  are  bursting  upon  our  sated 
eyes  with  all  the  advantages  of  novelty. 
198 


On  the  Withering  of  Plants 

The  Snowdrop  is  thus  extinguished  before 
the  Crocus,  and  the  Crocus  before  the 
after  flowers.  The  scene  must  never  be 
vacant,  the  old  must  remain  with  us  till 
the  new  is  well  unfolded ;  but  we  care 
little  for  the  last  lingering  blossoms,  and 
even  if  they  were  as  lovely  as  ever,  they 
would  remain  as  a  thing  of  a  bygone  day, 
in  which  our  interest  has  ceased. 

Now  if  there  were  no  withering,  and 
the  petals  continued  perfect  till  they  fell 
from  the  stalk,  a  flower  would  contrast 
with  its  successors  at  a  great  disadvan- 
tage— we  should  feel  that  it  was  being 
outshone  by  them.  But  Nature  will  not 
permit  her  favourites  to  be  dishonoured 
in  this  way,  and  she  quietly  withdraws 
them  from  the  rivalry.  When  we  have 
seen  them  as  long  as  she  thinks  good  to 
permit,  she  lays  their  beauty  waste.  But 
before  this  is  done,  a  close  observer  will 
notice  that  the  plant's  most  subtle  and 
exquisite  attractions  have  been  stolen 
away  imperceptibly,  so  that  even  whilst 
there  is  no  sign  of  actual  decay,  the 
power  of  enchantment  is  lost,  and  that 
which  finally  palls  upon  our  memory  is 
not  the  flower,  but  the  flower  robbed  of 
its  soul,  a  mere  copy  of  the  great  original 
masterpiece.  And  to  carry  out  this 
199 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

principle  the  more  effectively,  the  later 
blossoms  of  a  plant  are  nearly  always 
made  strikingly  feeble  and  imperfect,  so 
that  we  may  most  distinctly  feel  that  the 
day  of  its  glory  is  past. 

And  even  those  plants  which  have 
goodly  fruit,  or  which  develop  new  beauty 
in  decay,  must  be  banished  from  our 
sight  for  some  time  after  their  bloom  is 
spent.  We  see  this  very  conspicuously 
in  our  fruit  trees ;  and  even  the  Horse- 
Chestnut,  though  perhaps  more  uniformly 
beautiful  than  any  other  flowering  tree  we 
know,  must  wait  after  the  white  blaze  of 
its  flower-cones  is  extinguished  before  it 
may  show  its  prickly  balls  of  fruit,  or  the 
broad  majesty  of  its  hand-like  foliage. 

And  for  plants  which  are  said  to  bloom 
at  all  seasons  the  law  is  generally  the 
same.  Their  beauty  is  at  the  best  but 
at  one  brief  period ;  for  the  remainder 
of  the  year  they  sink  into  comparative 
insignificance.  Take,  for  instance,  the 
"  never-bloomless  "  Furze.  There  is  per- 
haps no  time,  especially  in  the  winter 
months,  in  which  it  would  be  impossible 
to  discover  at  least  some  few  of  those 
bright  yellow  blossoms  shining  forth  amid 
the  darkness  of  its  spacious  branches. 
But  the  time  of  its  full  magnificence  is 

200 


On  the  Withering  of  Plants 

May,  and  only  then  do  we  see  those 
glorious  spikes  of  bloom,  studded  thickly 
as  if  with  almonds,  which,  especially  in 
the  county  of  Devon,  form  one  of  the 
most  striking  beauties  of  our  forest  lands. 
The  plant  looks  ragged  and  miserable  for 
some  long  while  after  this  golden  hoard 
is  spent.  And  the  Daisy,  Dead  Nettles, 
and  Groundsel  obey  the  same  law  as  the 
Furze,  though  the  Daisy  lasts  very  long 
in  bloom.  The  Groundsel  is  probably  at 
its  best  in  winter.  In  summer  we  are 
too  apt  to  think  of  it  only  as  a  nuisance, 
and  do  not  give  it  credit  for  the  beauty 
it  really  possesses  when  growing  in  a 
fertile  soil. 

Very  few  flowers  make  a  creditable 
appearance  when  withering,  and  scarce 
any  of  our  common  ones  can  be  said  to 
wither  into  new  beauty ;  this  is  reserved 
for  the  less  brilliantly  coloured  leaves. 
And  though  I  cannot  say  how  far  the 
law  will  apply,  it  is  the  trees  with  incon- 
spicuous flowers,  like  the  beech  and  elm, 
which  make  the  most  splendid  appearance 
in  our  October  woods.1 

Now  why  is  this  weaned  feeling  with 

1  [The  Horse-Chestnut  is  an  exception ;  it  is  the  most 
conspicuous  in  its  flowers,  and  one  of  the  most  gorgeous 
in  its  autumnal  tints. — H.  N.  E.J 

2OI       / 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

which  we  look  upon  the  fading  Snowdrop 
so  different  from  that  with  which  we 
contemplate  ruins  and  other  memorials 
of  the  past?  Because  these  tell  us  of 
the  unknown  and  visionary,  and  tend  to 
make  it  real,  or  of  that  well-nigh  for- 
gotten past  which  we  love  to  recall ; 
whilst  the  withered  or  unseasonable  flower 
is  connected  with  the  immediate  past,  or 
is  but  the  dregs  of  a  beauty  of  which  we 
have  drunk  our  fill.  And  it  is  principally 
the  early  flowers  which  weary  us  when 
past  their  season,  because  they  carry  us 
back  to  the  less  perfect  time.  How 
miserable  it  is  on  some  cold  bleak  upland 
to  meet  with  Sloe  blossom  in  May !  It 
seems  to  recall  us  to  a  world  which  we 
rejoiced  at  having  left  behind.  It  is  the 
same,  though  in  a  less  degree,  with  Haw- 
thorn at  the  end  of  June.  The  vegetation 
of  May  is  supremely  lovely,  and  we  could 
well  enjoy  it  longer,  but  this  stray  blossom 
gives  us  only  such  a  taste,  such  a  faint  re- 
minder, of  that  loveliness,  that  the  tedium 
of  the  past  is  uppermost,  and  we  are 
wearied  more  than  pleased.  But  we 
never  grow  tired  of  the  last  lingering 
flowers  of  summer,  for  there  are  no  new- 
comers to  eclipse  them,  and,  besides,  they 
are  clothed  with  the  last  sad  splendour 

202 


On  the  Withering  of  Plants 

of  the  departing  year,  which  burns  slowly 
away  in  long  increasing  beauty  through 
the  solemn  grandeur  of  October,  till  the 
damp  November  mists  come  down  like 
a  shroud,  and  then  all  is  extinguished, 
the  last  leaves  shiver  from  the  trees,  and 
the  last  ripe  fruit  drops  pattering  to  the 
earth.  These  relics  do  not  tell  us  of  a 
dreary  time,  and  the  very  sadness  of 
autumn  is  swallowed  up  in  the  sense  of 
its  more  than  earthly  loveliness.  It  is 
as  with  the  fall  of  music :  it  is  passing 
from  us,  yet  it  moves  so  sweetly  that  we 
would  not  bid  it  stay. 

Nor  is  the  feeling  disagreeable  when 
the  flower  really  serves  to  connect  us 
with  an  unknown  past.  When  walking 
in  the  Jura  woods  in  early  summer,  I 
have  felt  the  intensest  pleasure  in  starting 
upon  the  faded  wrecks  of  some  unaccus- 
tomed spring  flowers,  for  the  Jura  spring 
was  unknown  to  me,  and  these  seemed 
dark  entrances  through  which  I  could 
catch  some  far-off  glimpses  of  its  beauty. 
Again,  we  often  find  in  summer  that 
our  feeling  is  just  the  contrary  to  that 
of  which  we  have  been  speaking.  Many 
a  bloom  will  pass  too  rapidly  in  that 
crowded  procession  to  permit  more  than 
a  glance  at  its  most  precious  beauties. 
203 


Flowers  and  Gardens 

We  would  often  call  a  halt  to  look  a 
little  longer ;  but  no,  that  cannot  be. 
The  plant  remains  in  abundance,  but  its 
special  beauty  is  often  as  fleeting  as  the 
sunset,  and  is  perhaps  visible  only  in 
the  choicest  specimens.  The  "  darling 
blue  "  of  the  little  Speedwell,  as  Tennyson 
calls  it,  will  be  often  found  thus  transitory. 
Specimen  after  specimen  may  we  examine, 
and  find  it  only  grey,  and  when  we  have 
at  last  discovered  the  genuine  tint,  the 
corolla  drops  almost  immediately  from  the 
gathered  stalk,  and  the  colour  will  never 
reappear  in  the  succeeding  flowers. 


THE    END 


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