V. BKUNELLA. 105 



flower left to love among the grass, the soft, warm- 

 scented Erunelle. 



6. Prunell, or Bruncll Gerarde calls it, and Brunella, 

 rightly and authoritatively, Tournefort ; Prunella, care- 

 lessly, Linnaeus, and idly following him, the moderns, 

 casting out all the meaning and help of its name of 

 which presently. Selfe-heale, Gerarde and Gray call it, 

 in English meaning that who has this plant needs no 

 physician. 



7. As I look at it, close beside me, it seems as if it 

 would reprove me for what I have just said of the pov- 

 erty of colour in its tribe ; for the most glowing of vio- 

 lets could not be lovelier than each fine purple gleam of 

 its hooded blossoms. But their flush is broken and op- 

 pressed by the dark calices out of which they spring, and 

 their utmost power in the field is only of a saddened 

 amethystine lustre, subdued with furry brown. And 

 what is worst in the victory of the darker colour is the 

 disorder of the scattered blossoms ; of all flowers I know, 

 this is the strangest, in the way that here and there, only 

 in their cluster, its bells rise or remain, and it always 

 looks as if half of them had been shaken off, and the top 

 of the cluster broken short away altogether. 



8. We must never lose hold of the principle that 

 every flower is meant to be seen by human creatures 

 with human eyes, as by spiders with spider eyes. But 

 as the painter may sometimes play the spider, and weave 

 a mesh to entrap the heart, so the beholder may play the 



