(Ratuie IHlotes : 
XLbc Selbocne Socict^j’s flbagasine. 
No. 58. OCTOBER, 1894. Vol. V. 
ROSEMARY. 
‘ Grow for two ends, it matters not at all, 
Be’t for my bridal or my burial.” 
Herrick. 
k^iULY weather had brought with it all my favourite 
flowers. Bright marigolds, with their golden haloes of 
spoke-like petals — the flowers of middle summer, so 
' dear to the heart of the cottager, which, alternately 
with the rose, have given their name to the most beautiful 
of cathedral windows — marigolds and white lilies, Canterbury 
bells, holly-hocks, sweet-williams, carnations, scarlet lychnis, 
damask roses, and lavender. 
My garden is full of flowers, and yet it is not by any means 
large. Its principal feature is a paved walk running from one 
end to the other, with wide flower-beds on either side, traversed 
at intervals by narrow, box-bordered paths. At the further 
end is a high wall entirely covered with a grape-vine, and be- 
neath this vine, with its jagged flickering leaves, is my favourite 
herb-bed, where many of the herbs of olden times grow in fra- 
grant and wholesome profusion. 
Great bushes of lavender stand here, like sentinels, and as 
they lift their countless spikes of purplish-grey flowerets, a re- 
flection, or rather a continuation of their sweet colouring is to be 
found in the blossoming herbs below — in the lilac whorls of the 
delicately up-springing thyme, and in the deeper purple of the 
larger flowering sage, with its hoary stems and leaves ; in the 
labiate blossoms of the spearmint and marjoram, and in the pale 
blue flowers of the rosemary — those frail blossoms, so strangely 
attractive, as they appear among the dark, narrow leaves of the 
aromatic shrub ! 
Pennyroyal, horehound, ground-ivy, and rue are also to be 
found in my herb bed, but it was the bush of dark-leaved rose- 
