ALPINE GARDENS. 239 



poetry sublime and sweet. Oh ! those welcome, 

 winsome harbingers of spring, those anemones 

 apennina, blanda, fulgens, Eobinsoniana, and the 

 glowing double crimson ; those heralds in their 

 beautiful mantles ; those cohorts gleaming with 

 purple and gold ; those sheets of aubrietia, arabis, 

 iberis ; those white and roseate cascades of Phlox 

 Nelsoni and subulata. Oh ! those glowing gentians, 

 that lithospermum so intensely, that primula so 

 softly, blue ; those auriculas, polyanthuses, oxlips, 

 powdered with gold and silver ; that dianthus gleaming 

 in the dull, hard day like the red star of a rocket in 

 the darkness. Oh ! those sedums, saxifrages, seinper- 

 vivums, and other jewels, countless as the harlequin 

 comfits upon a Christmas cake; and yet you rarely 

 find them even where there is the very spot for a 

 rock garden, and stone, and sand, and peat are at 

 hand. 



Some seem to think that these plants are delicate 

 as to constitution and difficult as to culture, and that 

 because they are called alpine, they will only flourish 

 on the high places of the earth. Fe\v plants have 

 more vitality, are transferred more successfully, thrive 

 and spread more quickly. There are proofs by the 

 dozen in the rock garden here which were brought by 

 my wife from the mountains of Southern France and 

 Northern Italy, which were many days on their 

 journey hither, sometimes travelling under great dis- 

 advantages, at the bottom of luncheon baskets and in 

 other occult localities, lest they should meet the eye of 

 the douanier on the look-out for the phylloxera, but are 

 now as happy in our humble vale as on tlie banks of 



