The Violet 



play,^ and almost unconscious, indeed, of 

 its own sweetness and richness. The 

 Dog Violet is this genius drawn into 

 notice, courted, flattered, and perverted 

 by the world, striving ambitiously for 

 show, and quite unaware that its deepest 

 qualities are lost. 



But is it not presumptuous for man to 

 depreciate in this way the perfect work 

 of his Creator? Must not our hearts be 

 wrong if we look with even the least dis- 

 satisfaction upon so lovely a flower as 

 this? No, not necessarily. For God 

 has given us all these things as teachers, 

 and the deepest moral truths are pre- 

 sented by them in symbols. There are 

 higher and lower degrees of beauty which 

 we are meant to recognise, and ugliness 

 itself is employed unsparingly, when ugli- 

 ness is necessary to teach. The ape in 

 a sense is beautiful, fashioned out of micro- 

 scopic elements as goodly as those of a 

 man ; the further you go in studying its 

 structure, the more beauty you will find ; 

 yet in general we rightly speak of it with 

 disgust. Nevertheless, the Dog Violet 

 has a beauty of its own order, which will 

 yield much enjoyment if we will but study 



^ [The same idea is to be found in Shakespeare, St. 

 Francis de Sales, and Wordsworth. — H. N. E.] 



41 



