OCTOBER 241 



small patience with the "faded vegetable" 

 once a rose and so always a rose to poor 

 Maria Esmond, and aside from an occasional 

 bouquet from Covent Garden Market no flowers 

 to speak of grow on his pages. Dickens will 

 always be associated with the ivy and holly of 

 his favourite season. 



Edward Fitzgerald was passionately fond of 

 nasturtiums. Ruskin loved lilies, and great 

 Florentine iris, and vine leaves, but indeed his 

 was a taste so catholic as to include the little 

 brunella, which he called a " brownie flower." 

 Hunted from lawns, crowded away into waste 

 places, and forced to find foothold by dusty 

 waysides and foul ditches it is curious that this 

 little self-heal should have been praised by 

 men so different, temperamentally, as Ruskin, 

 Thoreau, and Emerson. Like Thoreau, 

 Tennyson loved blue flowers. The Brown- 

 ings, the Rossettis, Swinburne, Morris, 

 Austen were all garden lovers. Longfellow 

 and Whittier were loyal to the New England 

 flora, and Lowell was at his best when he 

 wrote of the dandelion. Bryant was the 

 gentian's friend, and Hawthorne that of the 

 arethusa, as might have been expected of his 



