104 PKOSERPINA. 



4. It is most notable, also, farther, that none of these 

 flowers have any extreme beauty in colour. The blue 

 sage is the only one of vivid hue at all ; and we never 

 think of it as for a moment comparable to the violet or 

 bluebell : thyme is unnoticed beside heath, and many of 

 the other purple varieties of the group are almost dark 

 and sad coloured among the flowers of summer; while, 

 so far from gaining beauty on closer looking, there is 

 scarcely a blossom of them which is not more or less 

 grotesque, even to ugliness, in outline ; and so hooded or 

 lappeted as to look at iirst like some imperfect form of 

 snapdragon : for the most part spotted also, wrinkled as 

 if by old age or decay, cleft or torn, as if by violence, 

 and springing out of calices which, in their clustering 

 spines, embody the general roughness of the plant. 



5. I take at once for example, lest the reader should 

 think me unkind or intemperate in my description, a 

 flower very dear and precious to me ; and at this lime 

 my chief comfort in field walks. For, now, the reign 

 of all the sweet reginas of the spring is over the reign 

 of the silvia and anemone, of viola and veronica; and at 

 last, and this year abdicated under tyrannous storm,* the 

 reign, of the rose. And the last foxglove-bells are nearly 

 fallen ; and over all my fields and by the brooksides are 

 coming up the burdock, and the coarse and vainly white 

 aster, and the black knapweeds ; and there is only one 



* Written in 1880. 



