160 THE OLIVE LEAF. 



striking plants it is difficult to tell. Its blossom is not 

 more like a human countenance than any other blos- 

 som. It is not like the flowers of the orchis family, 

 which mimic so strangely the peculiarities of insect and 

 other animal life. It is only by a poetical analogy that 

 the eye can see in it any human resemblance. Perhaps 

 its colour may be the secret of its fascination, for blue is 

 peculiarly the colour of heaven of its serenity and 

 love. It is the colour of the sea out of which all life 

 comes, and of the air in which all things live and 

 move and have their being. It is the colour of the eye 

 that sees the beauty of the world, and of the robe 

 of the ephod worn by the high priest ordained to 

 make the unconscious beauty of things the conscious 

 beauty of holiness before the Lord. And no one can 

 gaze upon the large fragile blossom of the Alpine 

 veronica so exquisitely constructed, so delicately 

 tinted, reflecting the deepest blue of the overarching 

 summer sky and of the profoundest depth of the 

 glacier-crevasse, almost on whose brink it trembles 

 without being struck with the suitableness of its name. 

 It came to me like a sudden revelation when I found 

 a large shivering cluster of it growing in the roar and 

 spray of a mighty waterfall in the heart of Norway. 

 Even the little species that grows as a troublesome 

 weed in our fields and gardens is not undeserving of its 

 august name. Its blossom is very diminutive, its blue 

 is pale and washed out, and on the odd petal dis- 

 appears altogether in whiteness ; but it retains enough 

 of the family likeness to make it easily recognized. 



