SOME EARLY FLOWERS 289 



a place where no house was visible, and how at 

 intervals when the sun broke through the clouds 

 and shone on some distant hill or slope from which 

 the grey mist had just lifted, revealing the purple 

 colour beneath, it appeared like a vision of the 

 Delectable Mountains. 



From the flowers which are greatest only because 

 of their numbers, seeing that, comparing flower with 

 flower, they are equalled and surpassed in lustre by 

 very many other species, it may appear a far descent 

 to my little inconspicuous lily by the sea. For what 

 was there beyond the mere fact of its rarity to make 

 it seem more than many others than herb-robert 

 in the hedge, for instance, or any small delicate red 

 geranium or brighter lychnis ; or, to come to its own 

 colour, veronica with its " darling blue," and, lovelier 

 still, water forget-me-not, with a yellow pupil to its 

 turquoise iris ; or the minute bird-shaped blue milk- 

 wort, and gentian and bluebell and hairbell and borage 

 and periwinkle and blue geranium, and that delicate 

 rarity the blue pimpernel, and the still rarer and more 

 beautiful blue anemone ? Nevertheless, after many 

 days with this unimportant little flower, one among 

 many, from its earliest appearance, when it blossomed 

 sparingly at the foot of the rock, to the time when it 

 had increased and spread to right and left and formed 

 that blue-sprinkled band or path by which I walked 

 daily by the sea, often sitting or lying on the turf the 

 better to inhale its delicious perfume, it came to be 

 more to me than all those unimportant ones which I 

 have named, with many others equally beautiful, and 



