IV. GIULIETTA. 89 



years of such travelling, I had no thought of ever taking 

 up botany as a study ; feeling well that even geology, 

 which was antecedent to painting with me, could not be 

 followed out iii connection with art but under strict 

 limit.-, and with sore shortcomings. It has only been 

 the later discovery of the uselessness of old scientific 

 botany, and the abominableness of new, as an element 

 of education for youth ; and my certainty that a true 

 knowledge of their native Flora was meant by Heaven 

 to be one of the first heart-possessions of every happy 

 boy and girl in flower-bearing lands, that have compelled 

 me to gather into system my fading memories, and wan- 

 dering thoughts.* And of course in the diaries written 

 at places of which I now want chiefly the details of the 

 Flora, I find none ; and in this instance of the milkwort, 

 whose name . I was first told by the Chamouni guide, 

 Joseph Couttet, then walking with me on the unperilous 

 turf of the first rise of the Yosges, west of Strasburg, 

 and rebuking me indignantly for my complaint that, 

 being then thirty-seven years old, and not yet able to 

 draw the great plain and distant spire, it was of no use 

 trying in the poor remainder of life to do anything seri- 

 ous, then, and there, I say, for the first time examining 

 the strange little flower, and always associating it, since, 

 with the limestone crags of Alsace and Burgundy, I 



* I deliberately, not garrulously, allow more autobiography in 

 ' Proserpina ' than is becoming, because I know not how far I may be 

 permitted to carry on that which was begun in ' Fors.' 



