I 4 A YEAR IN A LANCASHIRE GARDEN. 



favourite association with it is of a later date. I 

 never see it without recalling the description poor 

 Anne Bronte gives in her strange wild story of The 

 Tenant of Wildfell HalL Just at the end, when 

 Helen, after her sad unhappy life, is free at last, 

 and wishes to tell Gilbert that what remains of her 

 life may now be his, she turns to " pluck that beau- 

 tiful half-blown Christmas Rose that grew upon 

 the little shrub without, just peeping from the 

 snow that had hitherto, no doubt, defended it from 

 the frost, and was now melting away in the sun." 

 And then, "having gently dashed the glittering 

 powder from its leaves," she says, " This Rose is not 

 so fragrant as a summer flower, but it has stood 

 through hardships none of them could bear: the 

 cold rain of winter has sufficed to nourish it, and 

 its faint sun to warm it ; the bleak winds have not 

 blanched it, or broken its stem, and the keen frost 

 has not blighted it. Look, Gilbert, it is still fresh 

 and blooming as a flower can be, with the cold 

 snow even now on its petals. Will you have it ? " 

 Nowhere in the whole of the Bronte novels (so far 

 as I remember) is a flower described as this one is. 

 It is suggestive enough of dark and drowsy 

 winter, that the two flowers which most enliven it 

 should bear the deadly names of black Hellebore and 



