THE ISIS IN JUNE 221 



tropical swiftness. The result was a crop not only of 

 leaf, but of flowers, of the richest and most luxuriant 

 growth. In the river-side gardens, the stems of the 

 white lilies were six and seven feet high, the clustered 

 roses almost broke their branches, the honeysuckle tore 

 itself from the walls by its weight of blossom, and the 

 second crop of grass was smothered with field-flowers. 

 For the moment the gardens eclipsed the fields both in 

 scent and colour, though the sense was almost oppressed 

 by the heavy odour of the drying hay-ricks. But in 

 the gardens there was a blending of delicate scents such 

 as has not been known for years. There has grown up 

 a fashion of preferring mere odours to perfumes, perhaps 

 because the aesthetic perception, which has learnt to 

 appreciate many things which it did not, is forgetting 

 the value of what needed no teaching. The taste for 

 wild-flowers is almost losing its sense of proportion, 

 when ox-eyed field-daisies are bought in the streets by 

 preference to roses, and at an equal price. But what- 

 ever the canons of beauty, that of scent can hardly 

 change. The rose has still the purest perfume in 

 Nature. Let those who are forgetting it, go down to 

 the country, and walk among the rose-gardens in the 

 morning, as the sun is drying the dew on their petals 

 in mid-July. The flower fancies of the Midsummer 

 Night's Dream were woven in the fresh hours of 

 midsummer mornings, as well as of summer twilight, 

 and it was then that the poet remembered to make his 

 night-flying fairy-queen send her elves 



" Some to kill cankers in the musk-rose buds ; " 



