NUPHAR, NYMPHAEA, AND NELUMBIUM. 



with bracken and topped with fir-boughs. Nelumbium, indeed, has no 

 right to such affectations as this supposed dread of frost, as anyone will 

 know who has seen it ramping by the railway ditches far up into the 

 frozen North of Japan, while in Tokio itself, of course, the plant is 

 solid ice for half the winter. I should be more disposed to think that 

 our trouble with Nelumbium arises always from our experimenting with 

 over-divided rhizomes, that have no more going, nor even staying, 

 power ; and that if we could get substantial, solid pieces (of N. specio- 

 sum at least, and that from the North of Japan or the Tokio Plain), 

 and brought them a little gently on in spring, before putting them 

 out into rich muddy soil and some 9 inches or a foot of water in the 

 sunniest place, we should have no further trouble about enjoying that 

 glorious foliage which sways the Jewel of the World at its heart, when the 

 huge leaves rock the dew-drop that they nurse — a shimmering globule 

 of quicksilver in their glaucous cup ; even if we are never to see the holy 

 flower, the type of the human soul, from black mud aspiring high to 

 daylight, and there unfolding a sweet and radiant rosy purity undefiled 

 by all the darkness it has traversed. Yet even of this I cannot think 

 we must despair, if once our Lotus is established and gets all the sun- 

 shine there is. Of Lotuses there are many ; but let us first succeed with 

 one. Of the Water-lilies there are legion, species and hybrids, all of 

 gloriousness untenable, and ever-increasing from year to year, as more 

 and more colossal pink and crimson beauties appear at more and more 

 colossal prices. But the tale of these things will be found at length 

 in catalogues addicted to such matters ; and the rock-garden has no 

 business with them, but to look serenely down on a pond bedecked 

 like the dream of some Indian princess of long ago, and see its own 

 reflection there broken by great blossoms floating on the water, in 

 rose and crimson and pink and pearl and copper and sulphur and 

 saffron and snow, looking incredibly tropical to be, as they are, as 

 hardy and even more vigorous than the poor little common white 

 Water-lily that now seems so very remote and obscure a cousin of 

 such regal gorgeousnesses. The obscurity of these, indeed, lies only 

 in the causes that provoke their unfolding. Full sun is the usual 

 notion of the key that unlocks them ; and certainly so it often is ; 

 v< t do Less often have I gone by in the twilight of a sad grey day, or 

 on a tranquil dull evening after rain, and found all the huge blossoms 

 agape and glowing, with the rain still standing in globular diamonds 

 over the marbled and mottled darkness of their leathern leaves. 



