The Blue Flower Border 259 
advised of him is as obsolete as the form in which 
it was rendered. He said it was “ good in a loch 
or licking medicine for shortness of breath/' Our 
apothecaries no longer make, nor do our physicians 
prescribe, u licking medicines.” The powdered root 
was urged as a complexion beautifier, especially to 
remove morphew, and as orris-root may be found 
in many of our modern skin lotions. 
Ruskin most beautifully describes the Flower de 
Luce as the flower of chivalry — ct with a sword for 
its leaf, and a Lily for its heart/ 1 These grand 
clumps of erect old soldiers, with leafy swords of 
green and splendid cuirasses and plumes of gold 
and bronze and blue, were planted a century ago in 
our grandmothers' garden, and were then Flower 
de Luce. A hundred years those sturdy sentinels 
have stood guard on either side of the garden gates — 
still Flower de Luce. There are the same clean-cut 
leaf swords, the same exquisite blossoms, far more 
beautiful than our tropical Orchids, though similar 
in shape ; let us not change now their historic 
name, they still are Flower de Luce — the Flower 
de Louis. 
The Violet family, with its Pansies and Ladies' 
Delights, has honored place in our Blue Border, 
though the rigid color list of a prosaic practical dyer 
finds these Violet allies a debased purple instead of 
blue. 
Our wild Violets, the blue ones, have for me a 
sad lack for a Violet, that of perfume. They are 
not as lovely in the woodlands as their earlier com- 
ing neighbor, the shy, pure Hepatica. Bryant, call- 
