VIOLA. 169 



flowers, through their beautie, varietie of colour, and exquisite 

 forme, do bring to a liberall and gentle manly minde the re- 

 membrance of honestie, comeliness, and all kinds of vertues. 

 For it would be an unseemely and filthie thing, as a certain 

 wise man saith, for him that doth looke upon and handle faire 

 and beautiful things, and who frequenteth and is conversant 

 in faire and beautiful places, to have his mind not faire, but 

 filthie and deformed." 



10. Thus Gerarde, in the close of his introductory notice 

 of the violet, speaking of things, (honesty, comeliness, and 

 the like,) scarcely now recognized as desirable in the realm 

 of England ; but having previously observed that violets are 

 useful for the making of garlands for the head, and posies to 

 smell to ; in which last function I observe they are still 

 pleasing to the British public : and I found the children here, 

 only the other day, munching a confection of candied violet 

 leaves. What pleasure the flower can still give us, uncan- 

 died, and unbound, but in its own place and life, I will try 

 to trace through some of its constant laws. 



11. And first, let us be clear that the native colour of the 

 violet is violet ; and that the white and yellow kinds, though 

 pretty in their place and way, are not to be thought of in 

 generally meditating the flower's quality or power. A white 

 violet is to black ones what a black man is to white ones ; and 

 the yellow varieties are, I believe, properly pansies, and be- 

 long also to wild districts for the most part ; but the true 

 violet, which I have just now called ' black,' with Gerarde, 

 " the blacke or purple violet, hath a great prerogative above 

 others," and all the nobler species of the pansy itself are of 

 full purple, inclining, however, in the ordinary wild violet to 

 blue. In the 'Laws of Fesole,' chap, vii., 20, 21, I have 

 made this dark pansy the representative of purple pure ; the 

 viola odorata, of the link between that full purple and blue ; 

 and the heath-blossom of the link between that full purple 

 and red. The reader will do well, as much as may be pos- 

 sible to him, to associate his study of botany, as indeed all 

 other studies of visible things, with that of painting : but he 

 must remember that he cannot know what violet colour 



