IMPRESSIONIST SKETCH 105 



who throb with every pulsation of Nature's heart. And if 

 the sunlight finds voice in the bravura of birds, how much 

 more directly in the bustle of growing wheat ! 



The growing intensity of unconscious vegetative life is 

 registered in the increasing brightness of floral colour. For 

 although there are many bright flowers in early Spring 

 the marsh marigold, which raises its golden cups from the 

 dank ditch ; the bright yellow celandine, which welcomes the 

 swallow ; the blue hyacinths, which make the wood-glade 

 glorious " the heavens upbreaking through the earth " ; the 

 laburnum, with its " dropping wells of fire "; the periwinkle 

 and the ground-ivy, and the golden daffodils, whose dance 

 "outdoes the sparkling waves in glee" yet the broad 

 fact is that as the days grow warmer and brighter, the 

 colours increase in intensity. Although we may not be 

 able to accept the meteorologist's suggestion too simple to 

 be true that the annual succession of colour corresponds 

 to the colour scheme of the rainbow, yet it seems demon- 

 strable that red and purple, blue and violet flowers, in 

 short, those of richer colour, become on the whole more 

 numerous as the days lengthen. 



Ruskin, following Goethe, defined the real nature of the 

 flower when he said, " The leaf which loves the light has, 

 above all things, the purpose of being married to another leaf, 

 and having child-leaves, and children's children of leaves, to 

 make the earth fair for ever. And when the leaves marry 

 they put on wedding-robes, and are more glorious than 

 Solomon in all his glory, and they have feasts of honey, and 

 we call them flowers." For it is admitted by all that the 

 petals are transfigured leaves, and that the pollen-producing 

 and seed-producing parts of the flower are also modified 

 leaves. The feasts of honey or nectar are overflowing wells 

 of sugar in more or less useful places ; the fragrance which is 

 so often given off from these creatures that toil not may be 



