227 



CHAPTER XII. 



CORA AND KRONOS. 



I. /^\F all the lovely wild plants — and few, moun- 

 ^-^' tain-bred, in Britain, are other than lovely, 

 — that fill the clefts and crest the ridges of my 

 Brantwood rock, the dearest to me, by far, are the 

 clusters of whortleberry which divide possession 

 of the lower slopes with the wood hyacinth and 

 pervenche. They are personally and specially dear 

 to me for their association in my mind with the 

 woods of Montanvert ; but the plant itself, irre- 

 spective of all accidental feeling, is indeed so 

 beautiful in all its ways — so delicately strong in 

 the spring of its leafage, so modestly wonderful 

 in the formation of its fruit, and so pure in choice 

 of its haunts, not capriciously or unfamiliarly, but 

 growing in luxuriance through all the healthiest and 

 sweetest seclusion of mountain territory throughout 

 Europe, — that I think I may without any sharp 

 remonstrance be permitted to express, for this 

 once only, personal feeling in my nomenclature, 



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