24 A TOUR BOUND MT GAUDEN. 



but the rose is far from being one of the flowers they prefer. 

 Are you not wearied, as I am, with the tints of the lily and 

 the rose, with which all women are bedaubed, and which, in 

 reality, would be as hideous as diamonds or coals for eyes, 

 genuine pearls for teeth, or eatable cherries for lips? Are you 

 not wearied, as I am, at having all our beauties roses; in a 

 word, with all the insipidities and sillinesses for which these 

 poor roses are the pretext? I think it disgraceful that our 

 poets are not better acquainted with nature and all the 

 eternal splendours with which God has endowed our abode. 

 I scarcely know one who has not proved by the manner in 

 which he speaks of flowers, trees, and herbage, that he has 

 never taken the pains to look at them. Only listen to them ! 

 they confine themselves within three or four trivial gene- 

 ralities, which they have read, and which they repeat like 

 synonymes. 



They are meadows enamelled with flowers. With what 

 flowers? of what colours are they? And in spring and 

 autumn it is just the same ; violets and roses always bloom 

 together in verse, though never in nature. Some, more bold 

 than the rest, say that these flowers are of a thousand colours. 

 The flowery hanks of rivulets I Are they the same flowers 

 that enamel the meadows? They know no more about them. 

 Zephyr who sports in the groves; which same zephyr is very 

 fond of kissing a half-hlown rose. 



They who write in verse are only acquainted with la rose, h 

 demi Sclose (the half-blown rose), on account of the rhyme. 

 An innovator, about four hundred years ago, ventured upon 

 fraiche eclose (newly blown), but they stopped there. 



But, look yonder; see, springing from its beautiful foliage, 

 sharp pointed as swords, a stem bearing only on one side a 

 spike of lovely rose-colom-ed or white flowers; that is a 

 gladiolus. The poets speak of it sometimes, but they only 

 know one thing about it, and that is, that it rhymes with 

 taieul (a linden-tree). They never fail to bring them together, 

 placing the glaieul under the tilleul — a thing I would not do 

 in my garden for the world; my poor gladiolus would fare but 

 badly in such a situation. It is very fortunate they don't 

 sometimes put the tilleul under the glaieul (the linden-tree 

 under the gladiolus) : it would rhyme quite as well. 



