56 



POPULAR GARDEN BOTANY. 



soon as I saw the flower by moonlight, I understood it. This 

 flower is made for the moon, as the Heliotrope is for the sun, 

 and refuses other influences, or to display her beauty in 

 any other light. The first night I saw the flower, I was con- 

 scious of a peculiar delight, I may even say, rapture. Many 

 white flowers are far more beautiful by day ; the Lily, for 

 instance, with its firm, thick 'leaf, needs the broad light to 

 manifest its purity. But these transparent greenish- white 

 leaves, which look dull in the day, are melted by the 

 moon to glistening silver ; and not only does the plant not 

 appear in its destined hue by day, but the flower, though as 

 bell-shaped, it cannot quite close again after having once 

 expanded, yet presses its petals together as closely as it can, 

 hangs down its little blossoms, and its tall stalk seems at 

 noon to have reared itself only to betray a shabby insignifi- 

 cance. Thus too with the leaves, which have burst asunder 

 suddenly like a Fan Palm, to make way for the stalk ; their 

 edges in the daytime look ragged and unfinished, as if Na- 

 ture had left them in a hurry for some more pleasing task. 

 On the day after the evening when I had thought it so 

 beautiful, I could not conceive how I had made such a mis- 

 take. But the second evening I went out into the garden 

 again, in clearest moonlight I stood, my flower more beau 



