92 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 



If you are to admire a flower only by rules and canons, you 

 may as well not admire at all. 1 will willingly allow an 

 artist or a connoisseur to point out to me the beauties of 

 a fine painting, because art alone can fully appreciate and 

 explain art, but a fine flower is given to me as much as to 

 you ; you shall not dictate artificial laws by which to judge 

 of Nature's beauty. If it speaks not to my heart at once, 

 no learned lecture will ever make it beautiful to me. I 

 will admire no statute-coloured tulips, nor act-of-parliament 

 polyanthuses. 



I really liked heartsease till florists called them pansies 

 a pretty name though, and Shakspearian too and put 

 a thousand and one varieties in their catalogues, advertising 

 flowers " as big as a penny piece ;" and what, in the name 

 of moderation, is one to do with "four thousand new 

 seedling, shrubby calceolarias, all named varieties," beau- 

 tiful as they doubtless all are ? If we are really called 

 upon to get up this vocabulary, better return to the days 

 when that little bright yellow globule, the first-introduced, 

 and that rare and curious English flower, " my lady's 

 slipper," were the only types of the tribe. When florists 

 drive matters to such extremities as these, there is but one 

 way out of it. We must wait awhile, a reaction will 

 take place ; the less showy sorts will gradually be disre- 

 garded, despite their solemn rules ; we shall select those 

 only that generally please, and Nature will again recover 

 her sway. 



Woe unto the flower that becomes the fashion ! It is 

 as sure to be spoilt as the belle of the season. How well 

 I remember the coming out, the first introduction, of that 

 brilliant little creature the scarlet verbena ! It was engaged 

 a hundred deep the moment it appeared ; the gardening 

 world was utterly infatuated, and fifteen florists, balked in 



