The Blue Flower Border 259 



advised of him is as obsolete as the form in which 

 it was rendered. He said it was "good in a loch 

 or licking medicine for shortness of breath." Our 

 apothecaries no longer make, nor do our physicians 

 prescribe, " licking medicines." The powdered root 

 was urged as a complexion beautifier, especially to 

 remove morphew, and as orris-root may be found 

 in many of our modern skin lotions. 



Ruskin most beautifully describes the Flower de 

 Luce as the flower of chivalry "with a sword for 

 its leaf, and a Lily for its heart." These grand 

 clumps of erect old soldiers, with leafy swords of 

 green and splendid cuirasses and plumes of gold 

 and bronze and blue, were planted a century ago in 

 our grandmothers' garden, and were then Flower 

 de Luce. A hundred years those sturdy sentinels 

 have stood guard on either side of the garden gates 

 still Flower de Luce. There are the same clean-cut 

 leaf swords, the same exquisite blossoms, far more 

 beautiful than our tropical Orchids, though similar 

 in shape; let us not change now their historic 

 name, they still are Flower de Luce the Flower 

 de Louis. 



The Violet family, with its Pansies and Ladies' 

 Delights, has honored place in our Blue Border, 

 though the rigid color list of a prosaic practical dyer 

 finds these Violet allies a debased purple instead of 

 blue. 



Our wild Violets, the blue ones, have for me a 

 sad lack for a Violet, that of perfume. They are 

 not as lovely in the woodlands as their earlier com- 

 ing neighbor, the shy, pure Hepatica. Bryant, call- 



