98 PUOSEIIPINA. 



to be classed with the Cytherides, and we might have as 

 much of it for beauty and for service as we choose, if we 

 only took half the pains to garnish our summer gardens 

 with living and life-giving blossom, that we do to garnish 

 our winter gluttonies with dying and useless ones. 



19. I have said nothing of root, or fruit, or seed, hav- 

 ing never had the hardness of heart to pull up a milkwort 

 cluster nor the chance of watching one in seed : The 

 pretty thing vanishes as it comes, like the blue sky of 

 April, and leaves no sign of itself that 1 ever found. 

 The botanists tell me that its fruit " dehisces loculicidally," 

 which I suppose is botanic for " splits like boxes," (but 

 boxes shouldn't split, and didn't, as we used to make and 

 handle them before railways). Out of the split boxes 

 fall seeds too few ; and, as aforesaid, the plant never 

 seems to grow -again in the same spot. I should thank- 

 fully receive any notes from friends happy enough to 

 live near milkwort banks, on the manner of its nativity. 



20. Meanwhile, the Thistle, and the Nettle, and the 

 Dock, and the Dandelion are cared for in their genera- 

 tions by the finest arts of Providence, shall we say ? or 

 of the spirits appointed to punish our own want of Pro- 

 vidence ? May I ask the reader to look back to the 

 seventh chapter of the first volume, for it contains sug- 

 gestions of thoughts which came to me at a time of very 

 earnest and faithful inquiry, set down, I now see too 

 shortly, under the press of reading they involved, but 

 intelligible enough if they are read as slowly as they were 



