Flowers and Gardens 



find fault with Keats' " St. Agnes' Eve." 

 We are glad to obtain such a glorious 

 vision at any cost. And yet here and 

 there we find its beauty almost oppressive, 

 in that continual effort after the utmost 

 possible luxury of sensuous appeal. How 

 the richness of the spiced dainties, of the 

 dishes, the cloth, in fact, of everything in 

 the room, is pressed forward ! We feel 

 constantly as if it would have been impos- 

 sible for the poet to carry this a single 

 hair's - breadth further. It is not so in 

 Tennyson's " Recollections of the Arabian 

 Nights," and the richer style can hardly 

 be considered perfectly healthy. 



Now I know a Larkspur far inferior in 

 beauty to Formosum, to which it is a 

 relief to turn, because the colour is so 

 chastely used, and every portion of it is 

 made of such good account. Look, too, 

 at the Gentianella, the most glorious blue 

 we have. One touch of the tint, and only 

 one, but how it makes us long for more ! 

 If we could fill the tube with the enchant- 

 ing colour, and spread it over the dark 

 outside, should we really find that we had 

 gained anything ? It is just in this 

 severity, this giving full value to all the 

 colour used, that highly cultivated flowers 

 are oftenest defective. Perhaps we should 

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