A Thirsty June 
been Belles de Jour , as Marvel of Peru is Belle de Null. 
I call them French Columbines, because I collected the 
seed in a dear little old terraced French garden, where they 
grew in semi-wild profusion along with Scarlet Flax. There 
were hedges of Lavender, and Roses, and Aloes, and 
Medlar-trees there, which made white bouquets of bloom, 
by the square tank full of water, and the garden melted 
away into a wild hillside thick with Myrtle and Rosemary, 
Lentisk, stunted Firs and Ilex. Along the fringe of the 
woodland grew purple Star Anemones and tiny little 
Arums or Friars’ Cowles. . . . But, alas! that garden, like 
so many others, has since suffered from a desire to improve 
on the part of the present owners. “ You cannot paint the 
Lily ” is not sufficiently borne in mind nowadays, I think. 
June 7. — How pretty the kitchen-garden is just now, with 
its Red Peonies, or Pionies, as old people here call them, 
and white and blue Centaurys ! This pronunciation still 
lingers in America. I really must get the salmon-pink 
Centaury, which grows in the Castle garden. I have heard 
that in Sussex the village mothers, when their babies are 
teething, used to make them wear necklets of beads turned 
from the Peony-root as a preventive of convulsions. A bit 
of the root hung round a child’s neck was formerly deemed 
a cure for epileptic fits, and also sovereign against night- 
mare, and, according to Mathiolus, a powder of the seeds 
would restore speech to such as had lost it. The Peony 
was called the Flower of Wealth by the Chinese. There is 
also in the garden red Geum, like glowing scarlet Rosettes, 
some Monkshood (but the glory of the old Helmet-flower 
is not yet at its zenith), and some Lily of the Valley, the 
May-lilies of some of the old Herbalists. We have only 
a small bed of this delightful flower ; I wish we had more. 
But, apparently, the ancestor, who loved bulbs, did not care 
about May-lilies. I wonder he did not, as it is said to be 
a cure for the gout, an ailment the hard-drinking gentlemen 
of the last century seem to have suffered from in no small 
degree. The German name is so pretty — Maiglockchen 
(Little Bells of May). The French name, Muguel , is rather 
i73 
