JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 261 



' Thick-growing thyme, and roses wet with dew, 

 Are sacred to the sisterhood divine.' 



As orchards to man, so are flowers and herbs to women. 

 Indeed the garden appears ceHbate, as does the house, without 

 womanly hands to plant and care for it. Here she is in place — 

 suggests lovely images of her personal accomplishments, as if 

 civility were first conceived in such cares, and retired unwillingly, 

 even to houses and chambers ; something being taken from their 

 elegancy and her nobleness by an undue absorption of her 

 thoughts in household affairs. 



But there is a fitness in her association with flowers and sweet 

 herbs, as with social hospitafities, showing her affinities with the 

 m.agical and medical, as if she were the plant All-Heal, and mother 

 of comforts and spices. Once the herb-garden was a necessary 

 part of every homestead ; every country house had one well 

 stocked, and there was a matron inside skilled in their secret 

 virtues, having the knowledge of how her 



* Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they 

 Have their acquaintance there,' 



her memory running back to the old country from whence they 

 first came, and of which they retained the fragrance. Are not 

 their names refreshing ? with the superstitions concerning the sign 

 under which they were to be gathered, the quaint spellings ; mint, 

 roses, fennel, coriander, sweet-cicely, celandine, summer savory, 

 smellage, rosemary, dill, caraway, lavender, tanzy, thyme, balm, 

 myrrh ; these and many more, and all good for many an ail ; 

 sage, too, sovereign sage, best of all — excellent for longevity — of 

 which to-day's stock seems running low — for 



' Why should man die ? So doth the sentence say, 

 When sage grows in his garden day by day ? ' 



— {Sweet Herbs.) 



— A/WV« — 



CVERYTHING has its own perfection, be it higher or lower JOHN 

 ^ in the scale of things ; and the perfection of one is not the CARDINAL 

 perfection of another. Things animate, inanimate, visible, in- NEWMAN 

 visible, all are good in their kind, and have a best of themselves, (i 801 -1890). 



