220 PROSERPINA. 



CHAPTER IV. 



GIUUETTA. 



1. SUPPOSING that, in early life, one had the power of living 

 to one's fancy, and why should we not, if the said fancy were 

 restrained by the knowledge of the two great laws concerning 

 our nature, that happiness is increased, not by the enlarge- 

 ment of the possessions, but of the heart ; and days length- 

 ened, not by the crowding of emotions, but the economy of 

 them ? if thus taught, we had, I repeat, the ordering of our 

 house and estate in our own hands, I believe no manner of 

 temperance in pleasure would be better rewarded than that of 

 making our gardens gay only with common flowers ; and 

 leaving those which needed care for their transplanted life to 

 be found in their native places when we travelled. So long as I 

 had crocus and daisy in the spring, roses in the summer, and 

 hollyhocks and pinks in the autumn, I used to be myself inde- 

 pendent of farther horticulture, and it is only now that I am 

 old, and since pleasant travelling has become impossible to 

 me, that I am thankful to have the white narcissus in my bor- 

 ders, instead of waiting to walk through the fragrance of the 

 meadows of Clarens ; and pleased to see the milkwort blue on 

 my scythe-mown banks, since I cannot gather it any more on 

 the rocks of the Vosges, or in the divine glens of Jura. 



2. Among the losses, all the more fatal in being unfelt, 

 brought upon us by the fury and vulgarity of modern life, I 

 count for one of the saddest, the loss of the wish to gather a 

 flower in travelling. The other day, whether indeed a sign 

 of some dawning of doubt and remorse in the public mind, as 

 to the perfect jubilee of railroad journey, or merely a piece of 

 the common daily flattery on which the power of the British 

 press first depends, I cannot judge ; but, for one or other of 

 such motives, I saw lately in some illustrated paper, a pictorial 

 comparison of old-fashioned and modern travel, representing, 

 as the type of things passed away, the outside passengers of 



