142 PROSERPINA. 



2. I suppose there is no question but that all 

 nice people like hawthorn blossom. 



I want, if I can, to find out to-day, 25 th May, 

 1875, what it is we like it so much for: holding 

 these two branches of it in my hand, — one full out, 

 the other in youth. This full one is a mere mass 

 of symmetrically balanced — snow, one was going 

 vaguely to write, in the first impulse. But it is 

 nothing of the sort. White, — yes, in a high degree ; 

 and pure, totally ; but not at all dazzling in the 

 white, nor pure in an insultingly rivalless manner, as 

 snow would be ; yet pure somehow, certainly ; and 

 white, absolutely, in spite of what might be thought 

 failure, — imperfection — nay, even distress and loss in 

 it. For every little rose of it has a green darkness 

 in the centre — not even a pretty green, but a 

 faded, yellowish, glutinous, unaccomplished green ; 

 and round that, all over the surface of the blossom, 

 whose shell-like petals are themselves deep sunk, 

 with grey shadows in the hollows of them — all 

 above this already subdued brightness, are strewn 

 the dark points of the dead stamens — manifest more 

 and more, the longer one looks, as a kind of grey 

 sand, sprinkled without sparing over what looked at 

 first unspotted light. And in all the ways of it 

 the lovely thing is more like the spring frock of 

 some prudent little maid of fourteen, than a flower ; 



