230 PROSERPINA. 



narily false ' ; thinking that its rarity could never have allowed 

 it to be fairly tried. If indeed true, or in any degree true, 

 the flower has the best right of all to be classed with the 

 Cytherides, and we might have as much of it for beauty and 

 for service as we chose, if we only took half the pains to gar- 

 nish our summer gardens with living and life-giving blossom, 

 that we do to garnish our winter gluttonies with dying and 

 useless ones. 



19. I have said nothing of root, or fruit, or seed, having 

 never had the hardness of heart to pull up a milkwort 

 cluster nor the chance of watching one in seed : The 

 pretty thing vanishes as it comes, like the blue sky of April, 

 and leaves no sign of itself that /ever found. The botanists 

 tell me that its fruit " dehisces loculicidally," which I suppose 

 is botanic for "splits like boxes," (but boxes shouldn't split, 

 and didn't, as we used to make and handle them before rail- 

 ways). Out of the split boxes fall seeds too few ; and, as 

 aforesaid, the plant never seems to grow again in the same 

 spot. I should thankfully receive any notes from friends 

 happy enough to live near milkwort banks, on the manner of 

 its nativity. 



20. Meanwhile, the Thistle, and the Nettle, and the Dock, 

 and the Dandelion are cared for in their generations by the 

 finest arts of Providence, shall we say? or of the spirits 

 appointed to punish our own want of Providence ? May I 

 ask the reader to look back to the seventh chapter of the first 

 volume, for it contains suggestions of thoughts which came 

 to me at a time of very earnest and faithful inquiry, set 

 down, I now see too shortly, under the press of reading they 

 involved, but intelligible enough if they are read as slowly as 

 they were written, and especially note the paragraph of sum- 

 mary of p. 86 on the power of the Earth Mother, as Mother, 

 and as Judge ; watching and rewarding the conditions which 

 induce adversity and prosperity in the kingdoms of men : 

 comparing with it carefully the close of the fourth chapter, p. 

 63,* which contains, for the now recklessly multiplying classes 



* Which, with the following page, is the summary of many chapters 

 of ' Modern Painters : * and of the aims kept in view throughout ' Mu 



