Flowers and Gardens 



trast with the winter, and by that cool, 

 deHcious freshness which no other season 

 can bestow. There arises, then, even for 

 the world-worn man, a sort of second 

 childhood — the film is half fallen from his 

 eyes ; but where will he see those flowers 

 which, if any can, might win him back to 

 Nature? Anemone, Dog's-Tooth Violet, 

 Pasque Flower, Yellow Adonis, Hepatica, 

 Gentianella, and the lesser Fritillaries — 

 what beauty can be matched with theirs ? 

 Yet how rarely do they, seem, to come 

 before us now ! 



My chief accusation then is, that gar- 

 deners are teaching us to think too little 

 about the plants individually, and to look 

 at them chiefly as an assemblage of beau- 

 tiful colours. It is difficult in those 

 blooming masses to separate one from 

 another ; all produce so much the same 

 sort of impression. The consequence is, 

 people see the flowers on the beds with- 

 out caring to know anything about them, 

 or even to ask their names. It was 

 different in the older gardens, because 

 there was just variety there, the plants 

 strongly contrasted with each other, and 

 we were ever passing from the beautiful 

 to the curious. Now we get little of 

 quaintness or mystery, or of the strange, 



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