PROSERPINA. 



from writing querulously. For while, the older I grow, 

 very thankfully I recognize more and more the number 

 of pleasures granted to human eyes in this fair world, I 

 recognize also an increasing sensitiveness in my temper 

 to anything that interferes with them ; and a grievous 

 readiness to find fault always of course submissively, 

 but very articulately with whatever Nature seems to 

 me not to have managed to the best of her power ; as, 

 for extreme instance, her late arrangements of frost this 

 spring, destroying all the beauty of the wood sorrels ; 

 nor am I less inclined, looking to her as the greatest of 

 sculptors and painters, to ask, every time I see a narcis- 

 sus, why it should be wrapped up in brown paper ; and 

 every time I see a violet, what it wants with a spur ? 



3. What any flower wants with a spur, is indeed the 

 simplest and hitherto to me unanswerablest form of the 

 question; nevertheless, when blossoms grow in spires, 

 and are crowded together, and have to grow partly 

 downwards, in order to win their share of light and 

 breeze, one can see some reason for the effort of the 

 petals to expand upwards and backwards also. But that 

 a violet, who has her little stalk to herself, and might 

 grow straight up, if she pleased, should be pleased to do 

 nothing of the sort, but quite gratuitously bend her 

 stalk down at the top, and fasten herself to it by her 

 waist, as it were, this is so much more like a girl of the 

 period's fancy than a violet's, that I never gather one 

 separately but with renewed astonishment at it. 



