292 Landscape Gardening 



later and hotter time of the year. The fact that the violet 

 blooms in the spring, is of itself enough to make the season 

 dear to us. We do not now mean the pansy, or three-col- 

 ored violet- -the Johnny-jump-up of the cottager -- that 

 little, roguish coquette of a blossom, all animation and 

 boldness -- but the true violet of the poets; the delicate, 

 modest, retiring violet, dim, 



"But sweeter than the lid's of Juno's eyes, 

 Or Cytherea's breath." 



The flower that has been loved, and praised, and petted, and 

 cultivated, at least three thousand years, and is not in the 

 least spoiled by it; nay, has all the unmistakable freshness 

 still, of a nature ever young and eternal. 



There is a great deal, too, in the associations that cluster 

 about spring flowers. Take that early yellow flower, popu- 

 larly known as "Butter and Eggs," and the most common 

 bulb in all our gardens, though introduced from abroad. It 

 is not handsome, certainly, although one always welcomes 

 its hardy face with pleasure; but when we know that it 

 suggested that fine passage to Shakespeare - 



"Daffodils 



That come before the swallow dares, and take 

 The winds of March with beauty" 



we feel that the flower is for ever immortalized; and though 

 not half so handsome as our native blood-root, with its 

 snowy petals, or our wood anemone, tinged like the first 

 blush of morning, yet still the daffodil, embalmed by poesy, 

 like a fly in amber, has a value given it by human genius 

 that causes it to stir the imagination more than the most 

 faultless and sculpture-like camellia that ever bloomed in 

 marble conservatory. 



A pleasant task it would be to linger over the spring 

 flowers, taking them up one by one, and inhaling all their 

 fragrance and poetry, leisurely - whether the cowslips, 

 hyacinths, daisies, and hawthorns of the garden, or the 

 honeysuckles, trilliums, wild moccasins, and liverworts of 



