6 PROSERPINA. 



flowers has nothing whatever to do. I am amazed and 

 saddened, more than I can care to say, by finding how 

 much that is abominable may be discovered by an ill- 

 taught curiosity, in the purest things that earth is allowed 

 to produce for us; perhaps if we were less reprobate in 

 our own ways, the grass which is our type might con- 

 duct itself better, even though it has no hope but of 

 being cast into the oven ; in the meantime, healthy 

 human eyes and thoughts are to be set on the lovely 

 laws of its growth and habitation, and not on the mean 

 mysteries of its birth. 



9. I relieve, therefore, our presently inquiring souls 

 from any farther care as to the reason for a violet's spur, 

 or for the extremely ugly arrangements of its stamens 

 and style, invisible unless by vexatious and vicious peep- 

 ing. You are to think of a violet only in its green 

 leaves, and purple or golden petals ; you are to know 

 the varieties of form in both, proper to common species ; 

 and in what kind of places they all most fondly live, and 

 most deeply glow. 



" And the recreation of the minde which is taken 

 heereby cannot be but verie good and honest, for they 

 admonish and stir up a man to that which is comely and 

 honest. For flowers, through their beautie, varietie of 

 colour, and exquisite forme, do bring to a liberall and 

 gentle manly minde the remembrance of honestie, come- 

 liness, and all kinds of vertues. For it would be an un- 

 seemely and filthie thing, as a certain wise man saith, for 



