NEWS OF SPRING 

 8 

 What flowers, then, blossomed in the gardens of our 

 fathers? They were very few, no doubt, and very small and 

 very humble, scarce to be distinguished from those of the 

 roads, the fields and the glades. Have you ever observed 

 the poverty and the monotony, most skilfully disguised, of 

 the floral decoration of the finest miniatures in our old manu- 

 scripts? Again, the pictures in our museums, down to the 

 end of the Renascence period, have only five or six types of 

 flowers, incessantly repeated, wherewith to enliven the richest 

 palaces, the most marvellous views of Paradise. Before the 

 sixteenth century, our gardens were almost bare; and, later, 

 Versailles itself, Versailles the splendid, could have shown us 

 only what the poorest village shows to-day. Alone, the 

 Violet, the Daisy, the Lily of the Valley, the Marigold, the 

 Poppy, a few Crocuses, a few Irises, a few Colchicums, the 

 Foxglove, the Valerian, the Larkspur, the Cornflower, the 

 Wild Pink, the Forget-me-not, the Gillyflower, the Mallow, 

 the Rose, still almost a Sweetbriar, and the great silver Lily, 

 the spontaneous ornaments of our woods and of our snow- 

 frightened, wind-frightened fields: these alone smiled upon 

 our forefathers, who, for that matter, were unaware of their 



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