I. VIOLA. 7 



him that cloth looke upon and handle faire and beautiful 

 thinirs. and who frequenteth and is conversant in faire 

 and beautiful places, to have his mind not faire, but 

 filthie and deformed/' 



10. Thus Gerarde, in the close of his introductory 

 notice of the violet, speaking of things, (honesty, come- 

 liness, and the like,) scarcely now recognized as desirable 

 in the realm of England; but having previously ob- 

 served that violets are useful for the making of garlands 

 for the head, and posies to smell to ; in which last func- 

 tion I observe they are still pleasing to the British pub- 

 lic : and I found the children here, only the other day, 

 munching a confection of candied violet leaves. "What 

 pleasure the flower can still give us, uncandied, and un- 

 bound, but in its own place and life, I will try to trace 

 through some of its constant laws. 



11. And first, let us be clear that the native colour of 

 the violet -is violet ; and that the white and yellow kinds, 

 though pretty in their place and way, are not to be 

 thought of in generally meditating the flower's quality 

 or power. A white violet is to black ones what a black 

 man is to white ones; and the yellow varieties are, I 

 believe, properly pansies, and belong also to wild dis- 

 tricts for the most part; but the true violet, which I 

 have just now called 4 black,' with Gerarde, " the blacke 

 or purple violet, hath a great prerogative above others," 

 and all the nobler species pf the pansy itself are of full 

 purple, inclining, however, in the ordinary wild violet to 



