PANSIES. 95 



movement, as the light plays upon them, and are 

 more like pearls than anything else in nature. 



Among my humbler flowers, of which I have 

 somehow made no mention, is the Pansy, yet few 

 flowers have more associations connected with 

 them. The Pansy the Heartsease we still some- 

 times call it is Shakespeare's " Love in Idleness," 

 and Milton's " Pansy freak'd with jet." The Ame- 

 rican poet, Edgar Poe, speaks of the " beautiful 

 Puritan Pansies ; " and I remember a fine wild 

 passage in one of this same poet's little-known 

 essays, where two angels are talking, and one of 

 them says " We will swoop outward into the 

 starry meadows beyond Orion, where for Pansies, 

 and Violets, and Heartsease, are the beds of the 

 triplicate and triple-tinted suns." 



Last year my finest bed was one of the Canna 

 Indica, in which every plant threw up grand broad 

 leaves and spikes of crimson or yellow blossom. 

 Why is not the Canna far more common in all 

 our gardens ? At present one sees it in public 

 parks, or where gardening on a great scale is 

 carried on, but in smaller gardens it is very rare, 

 and yet it is easy enough to grow; and once I 

 think it must have been more known than it is at 

 present. Gerarde speaks of it as " the flowering 



