42 FAMILIAR GARDEN FLOWERS, 
therefore has no right to a place in any of the books. 
The biennials should make a declaration against this state 
of things. For the sake of an hour’s amusement we have 
ransacked our library, and found but few allusions to the 
plant. The botanists say it is not British, and therefore is 
not one of our wild flowers. Au passant, we will remark 
upon this, that we once found a grand plant of the blue 
variety growing in Bonsal Dale, Derbyshire, and that is our 
only acquaintance with it as a wilding. The hooks that 
treat of annuals ignore biennials, and the books that treat 
of perennials do the same, and so the biennials are denied 
benefit of clergy, and there is left to them the final but 
sufficient consolation that they can do very well without it. 
That we may not appear heathenish, it is proper to say that 
the clergy, philologically considered, are not necessarily 
employed in a sacred office—they are learned men; men 
who can read and write; men possessed of skill, science, 
and clerkship. As Blackwood remarks, “the judges were 
usually created out of the sacred order ; and all the inferior 
offices were supplied by the lower clergy, which has ocea- 
sioned their successors to be denominated clerks to this 
day.” 
But here is a digression. Well, we find figures of 
Canterbury bells in Gerard and Parkinson, but it is hard 
work to make them out, because they are badly drawn and 
confusedly described. But it is something to say for these 
old masters that if we want to trace the history of such 
a common plant we must ask them to help us, because 
modern authors aim so high that their shafts fly over many 
common but useful and beautiful things. 
It is time to say something about the cultivation of 
this noble campanula, and it will be consistent with the 
