100 
jie in their earliest blue and a soldanelle beside the fading 
snow!” 
So ie calls for his wild flowers ; and he bids the painter return 
again to nature ‘“‘and paint a gray wall of Alpine crag with 
budding roses crowning it like a wreath of rubies. at is what 
he was meant to do in this world, not to paint bouquets in china 
vases |” 
a 
i) 
o 
4 
ia 
fae) 
fo) 
= 
o 
a 
we 
Fe 
ny 
pf 
ont 
agery im when he says to the im- 
aginative architect: ‘ NG dying petal nor drooping tendril is so 
feeble as to have no help for you; no robed pride of blossom so 
kingly but it will iy aside its purple to recover at your hands 
e pale immortality 
We have tarried ie with Ruskin. We must turn and hear 
DeQuincey acknowledge his debt to the flowers; when he cries 
“‘O flowers and blossoms, to which as to his symbols God has 
given the glorious privilege of rehearsing forever on earth his 
Voices from English prose oF ‘the previous century we do not 
hear so often, The dissociation of the love of flowers from its lit- 
erary Sereson was indeed: Seen of that Seb cen- 
tury. b 
Natur it mayb e, ut in 
terms of conventional formality, and Vature will not be patronized. 
Yet there were the seeds of a nature-world of blossom lying be- 
neath the eighteenth century surface ; the gar ee peluctant but 
habitual concession “ Goldsmith shall pull his flowers"’ give. 
Goldsmith’s biography in a sentence, and we ee iis eaaee 
ness of heart. 
i e century’s end came Burns and Wordsworth and 
a 
& 
the flowers bloomed ut , and mankind took a new 
draught from the Castalian spring n n came Landor, 
in whose prose the flowers bloom in immortal beauty. Would 
a 
he represent the conversation of Sir Philip Sidney, it is to make 
