AND FLOWERS OF POETRY. 159 
MODESTY. 
BLUE VIOLET. 
Let us entreat our friends who would seek for the purest and 
most healthy pleasures, to rise with the sun, and accept the 
invitation of Elliott to 
Walk where hawthorns hide 
The wonders of the lane ; 
and then — but Howitt, in all his freshness, shall tell you what 
delights you will meet with : — 
“All unexpectedly, in some embowered lane, you are arrest¬ 
ed by the delicious odour of violets, those sweetest of Flora’s 
children, which have furnished so many beautiful allusions to 
the poets, and which are not yet exhausted; they are like true 
friends, we do not know half their sweetness till they have felt 
the sunshine of our kindness; and again, they are like the 
pleasures of our childhood, the earliest and the most beautiful. 
In May, they are seen in all their glory — blue and white — 
modestly peering through their thick-clustering leaves.” 
Barry Cornwall places the violet before the rose in the fol¬ 
lowing lines. True it is that modesty, of which quality it is 
the universal emblem, is more to be desired than beauty, but 
we must ever acknowledge the rose as the queen of flowers. 
It has a scent as though Love, for its dower, 
Had on it all his odorous arrows tost; 
For though the rose has more perfuming power 
The violet (haply, ’cause ’tis almost lost, 
And takes us so much trouble to discover) 
Stands first with most, but always with a lover. 
It is interesting to notice how widely the violet is distributed 
over this blooming world. They spring at the foot of the Alps, 
and bloom on the very summit of the Alleganies; — their 
