42 FAMILIAR GARDEN FLOWERS. 







therefore has no right to a place in any of the books. 

 The biennials should make a declaration against this state 

 of things. For the sake of an hour's amusement we have 

 ransacked our library, and found but few allusions to the 

 plant. The botanists say it is not British, and therefore is 

 not one of our wild flowers. En passant, we will remark 

 upon this, that we once found a grand plant of the blue 

 variety growing in Bonsai Dale, Derbyshire, and that is our 

 only acquaintance with it as a wilding. The books that 

 treat of annuals ignore biennials, and the books that treat 

 of perennials do the same, and so the biennials are denied 

 benefit of clergy, and there is left to them the final but 

 sufficient consolation that they can do very well without it. 

 That we may not a-ppear heathenish, it is proper to say that 

 the clergy, philologically considered, are not necessarily 

 employed in a sacred office they are learned men ; men 

 who can read and write ; men possessed of skill, science, 

 and clerkship. As Blackwood remarks, " the judges were 

 usually created out of the sacred order ; and all the inferior 

 offices were supplied by the lower clergy, which has occa- 

 sioned their successors to be denominated clerks to this 

 day." 



But here is a digression. "Well, we find figures of 

 Canterbury bells in Gerard and Parkinson, but it is hard 

 work to make them out, because they are badly drawn and 

 confusedly described. But it is something to say for these 

 old masters that if we want to trace the history of such 

 a common plant we must ask them to help us, because 

 modern authors aim so high that their shafts fly over many 

 common but useful and beautiful things. 



It is time to say something about the cultivation of 

 this noble campanula, and it will be consistent with the 



