132 PROSERPINA. 



Alcestis, when she returns to the day from the 

 dead. 



But the wilder and stronger blossoms of the 

 Hawk's-eye — again you see I refuse for them 

 the word weed ; — and the waste-loving Chicory, 

 which the Venetians call ' Sponsa solis,' are all 

 to be held in one class with the Sunflowers ; but 

 dedicate, — the daisy to Alcestis alone ; others to 

 Clytia, or the Physician Apollo himself: but I 

 can't follow their mythology yet awhile. 



3. Now in these two families you have typi- 

 cally Use opposed to Beauty in wildness ; it is 

 their wildness which is their virtue ; — that the 

 thyme is sweet where it is unth ought of, and the 

 daisies red, where the foot despises them : while, 

 in other orders, wildness is their crime, — " Where- 

 fore, when I looked that it should bring forth 

 grapes, brought it forth wild grapes ? " But in all 

 of them you must distinguish between the pure 

 wildness of flowers and their distress. It may 

 not be our duty to tame them ; but it must be, 

 to relieve. 



4. It chanced, as I was arranging the course 

 of these two chapters, that I had examples given 

 me of distressed and happy wildness, in immediate 

 contrast. The first, I grieve to say, was in a bit 

 of my own brushwood, left uncared-for evidently 



