8 PROSERPINA. 



blue. In the 'Laws of Fesole,' chap, vii., 20, 21, I 

 have made this dark pansy the representative of purple 

 pure ; the viola odorata, of the link between that full 

 purple and blue ; and the heath-blossom of the link be- 

 tween that full purple and red. The reader will do well, 

 as much as may be possible to him, to associate his study 

 of botany, as indeed all other studies of visible things, 

 with that of painting : but he must remember that he 

 cannot know what violet colour really is, unless he watch 

 the flower in its early growth. It becomes dim in age, 

 and dark when it is gathered at least, when it is tied in 

 bunches ; but I am under the impression that the colour 

 actually deadens also, at all events, no other single 

 flower of the same quiet colour lights up the ground 

 near it as a violet will. The bright hounds-tongue looks 

 merely like a spot of bright paint ; but a young violet 

 glows like painted glass. 



12. "Which, when you have once well noticed, the two 

 lines of Milton and Shakspeare which seem opposed, 

 will both become clear to you. The said lines are 

 dragged from hand to hand along their pages of pilfered 

 quotations by the hack botanists, who probably never 

 saw them, nor anything else, in Shakspeare or Milton in 

 their lives, till even in reading them where they rightly 

 come, you can scarcely recover their fresh meaning : but 

 none of the botanists ever think of asking why Perdita 

 calls the violet ' dim,' and Milton ' glowing.' 



Perdita, indeed, calls it dim, at that moment, in think- 



