312 MY FARM. 



of Golden-rod and of the Cardinal flower (Lobelia) , 

 In a little bed scooped from the turf and bordering 

 upon the nearer home-walks, are the old-fashioned 

 Spider-wort, and that old white Lily, which Raphael 

 makes the Virgin hold on the day of her espousals. 

 And yet you may go through half the finest gardens of 

 the country and never find this antiquated Lily ! The 

 sweet Violet and the Mignonette have their place in 

 these new borders, as well as the roses. Cypress and 

 Madeira vines twine, in leash with the German ivy, 

 over a pile of stumps that have been brought down 

 from the pasture ; under the lee of a thicket of pines, 

 among lichened stones heaped together, is a group of 

 ferns and Lycopodiums; and the sweet Lily of the Val- 

 ley, true to its nature and quality, thrives in a dark 

 bit of ground half shaded between two spurs of a 

 bushy thicket. 



Of course, there are the Verbenas, for which every 

 year a fresh circlet of ground is prepared from the 

 turf, and a great tribe of Geraniums, to bandy scar- 

 lets with the Salvias ; and the Fuchsias, too though 

 very likely not the latest named varieties ; nor are 

 they petted into an isolated, pagoda-like show, but 

 massed together in a little group below the edge of 

 the fountain, where they will catch its spray, and 

 where their odorless censers of purple and white and 

 crimson may swing, or idle, as they will. And among 



