156 A TOUE BOUND MY GARDEN. 



guished amateurs have been kind enough to offer me in 

 exchange for mine !" 



To return to anemones, — they were brought into France 

 from the East Indies, more than two centuries ago, by a 

 Monsieur Bachelier, who was ten years before he would give 

 a single one to anybody. A magistrate went to see him in 

 his robes, and purposely making their folds drag over the 

 anemones in seed, contrived to carry away a few of them, 

 which adhered to the wool of his robe. 



Never speak to an amateur of anemones, of anything else 

 but his anemones ; if you say to him : " I have a beautiful 

 pink," he will ask you what sort of an anemone that is ? 

 But do not imagine that the amateurs of flowers love flowers 

 better than the learned do : the learned do not acknowledge 

 the cultivated anemone, they say that it is a monster, or they 

 dry it, paste it on paper, and write barbarous words under it. 

 Amateurs content themselves with requiring difficult con- 

 ditions of anemones ; thus there is a sort of green calyx, 

 which ought to be placed just at one-third from the flower, 

 and two-thirds from the earth, and without this the anemone 

 may display the richest colours in vain — it will be dismissed 

 from the bed, and declared nothing but bouquet I I spare you 

 a dozen more or less singular conditions which are required 

 of these poor flowers. 



Here is a peony, a sort of gigantic rose, of the most beauti- 

 ful red. There are no amateurs of peonies, unless it be the 

 tree-peony, because that is perhaps less beautiful, more diffi- 

 cult to cultivate, but more scarce. The ordinary peony, red, 

 rose-coloured or white, is held in no esteem. 



But it is so common ! Thanks, Lord, for all that thou 

 has created common ! thanks for the blue heavens, the sun, 

 the stars, murmuring waters, and the shade of embowering 

 oaks, — thanks for the corn-flowers of the fields and the gilly- 

 flowers of the walls, — thanks for the songs of the linnet and 

 the hymns of the nightingale, — thanks for the perfumes of the 

 air and' the sighing of the winds among the trees, — ^thanks 

 for the magnificent clouds gilded by the sun at its setting and 

 rising, — thanks for love, the most common sentiment of all, — 

 thanks for all the beautiful things thy stupendous bounty has 

 made common ! 



