April Beauty of Primrose Yellow. 1 1 1 



reminiscences of by-gone years, in the sensation of 

 meeting with primroses for the first time in the spring, 

 especially if they happen to be in great rich clusters, in 

 some corner where we come upon them unexpectedly. 

 There are several nooks in the Val Ste. Veronique which 

 the primroses have elected for their homes, particularly 

 one . place between the rivulet and a great wild cherry- 

 tree, where there must be two or three thousand of these 

 flowers. Primaveris, first of the spring, primevtre, and 

 first not only in the sense that it is earliest, but first also 

 jn the perfection of its loveliness, if you think only of 

 the delicate corolla, and not of the great coarse leaves, 

 which seem as if they had been put there for nothing but 

 to make us feel the exquisiteness of the pale corolla 

 more completely. That corolla is the perfection of 

 Nature's yellow, for it shows all the delicacy the color 

 is capable of; and if you seek that coloring elsewhere, 

 you need not look for it on the earth, but may haply find 

 it once in a twelvemonth in the purity of the clear heaven 

 after sunset. The bees are glad when the primroses 

 bloom in the grassy hollows, and they come tO'them from 

 far, well knowing that there is honey down in the tube 

 of the one soft beautiful petal. And whilst the primroses 

 live in great companies in the shady places that suit them 

 best, the cowslip and oxslip, their very near relations, live 

 out in the meadows and pastures, over which also the 

 bees range at this time very busily. 



The influence of agriculture upon landscape is one 

 of those questions which force themselves irresistibly 

 upon our attention when we think about art and Nature. 



