IV. THE FLOWERS. 83 



ively visible flower ; Eryngo Jura hyacinth, (eomosus,) 

 and the edges of upper stems and leaves in many plants ; 

 while others, (Geranium luciduin,) are made to delight us 

 with their leaves rather than their blossoms ; only I sup- 

 pose, in these, the scarlet leaf colour is a kind of early 

 autumnal glow, a beautiful hectic, and foretaste, in 

 sacred youth, of sacred death. 



I observe, among the speculations of modern science, 

 several, lately, not uningenious, and highly industrious, on 

 the subject of the relation of colour in flowers, to insects 

 to selective development, etc., etc. There are such rela- 

 tions, of course. So also, the blush of a girl, when she first 

 perceives the faltering in her lover's step as he draws near, 

 is related essentially to the existing state of her stomach ; 

 and to the jstate of it through all the years of her previous 

 existence. Nevertheless, neither love, chastity, nor blush- 

 ing, are merely exponents of digestion. 



All these materialisms, in their unclean stupidity, are 

 essentially the work of human bats; men of semi-faculty 

 or semi-education, who are more or less incapable of so 

 much as seeing, much less thinking about, colour; among 

 whom, for one-sided intensity, even Mr. Darwin must be 

 often ranked, as in his vespertilian treatise on the ocelli of 

 the Argus pheasant, which he imagines to be artistically 

 gradated, and perfectly imitative of a ball and socket. If 

 I had him here in Oxford for a week, and could force him 

 to try to copy a feather by Bewick, or to draw for himself 

 a boy's thumbed marble, his notions of feathers, and balls, 



