^*'i*'li 



LETTEE XIV. 



THE VIOLEX — ANTS~TH£ POWER OF LOVE — MIAACLES. 



Mt turf is full of violets of all the known sorts. Now here 

 is another flower that has had great difficulty in triumphing 

 over the insipidities and the common places of the little 

 versifiers who have "babbled" about it upon hearsay, and 

 all one after the other. No one will accuse me of ill-will 

 towards the violet, I who have made an entire plat of it ! and 

 see what care I have taken of them, see how I have shaded 

 them with trees in order that the sun's rays may be softened 

 before they reach them ! The black American walnut, the 

 yellow-wooded ash, acacias, with their rose-coloured and white 

 blossoms, the white poplar, whose leaves are lined with silver, 

 the service-tree, with its branches of coral, the ebony with 

 its golden clusters, the red chestnut-tree, with its great rosy 

 thyrses, the beech with its purple foliage, are aU only there 



