Proserpina, Volume 2 | Page 8

weedy varieties, and much subdued in the beautiful ones; and generally the pansies have them, large, with spear-shaped central leaves; and the violets small, with heart-shaped leaves, for more effective decoration of the ground. I now note the characters of each species in their above given order.
30. I. VIOLA REGINA. Queen Violet. Sweet Violet. 'Viola Odorata,' L., Flora Danica, and Sowerby. The latter draws it with golden centre and white base of lower petal; the Flora Danica, all purple. It is sometimes altogether white. It is seen most perfectly for setting off its colour, in group with primrose,--and most luxuriantly, so far as I know, in hollows of the Savoy limestones, associated with the pervenche, which embroiders and illumines them all over. I believe it is the earliest of its race, sometimes called 'Martia,' March violet. In Greece and South Italy even a flower of the winter.
"The Spring is come, the violet's _gone_, The first-born child of the early sun. With us, she is but a winter's flower; The snow on the hills cannot blast her bower, And she lifts up her dewy eye of blue To the youngest sky of the selfsame hue.
And when the Spring comes, with her host Of flowers, that flower beloved the most Shrinks from the crowd that may confuse Her heavenly odour, and virgin hues.
Pluck the others, but still remember Their herald out of dim December,-- The morning star of all the flowers, The pledge of daylight's lengthened hours, Nor, midst the roses, e'er forget The virgin, virgin violet."[4]
3. It is the queen, not only of the violet tribe, but of all low-growing flowers, in sweetness of scent--variously applicable and serviceable in domestic economy:--the scent of the lily of the valley seems less capable of preservation or use.
But, respecting these perpetual beneficences and benignities of the sacred, as opposed to the malignant, herbs, whose poisonous power is for the most part restrained in them, during their life, to their juices or dust, and not allowed sensibly to pollute the air, I should like the scholar to re-read pp. 251, 252 of vol. i., and then to consider with himself what a grotesquely warped and gnarled thing the modern scientific mind is, which fiercely busies itself in venomous chemistries that blast every leaf from the forests ten miles round; and yet cannot tell us, nor even think of telling us, nor does even one of its pupils think of asking it all the while, how a violet throws off her perfume!--far less, whether it might not be more wholesome to 'treat' the air which men are to breathe in masses, by administration of vale-lilies and violets, instead of charcoal and sulphur!
The closing sentence of the first volume just now referred to--p.254--should also be re-read; it was the sum of a chapter I had in hand at that time on the Substances and Essences of Plants--which never got finished;--and in trying to put it into small space, it has become obscure: the terms "logically inexplicable" meaning that no words or process of comparison will define scents, nor do any traceable modes of sequence or relation connect them; each is an independent power, and gives a separate impression to the senses. Above all, there is no logic of pleasure, nor any assignable reason for the difference, between loathsome and delightful scent, which makes the fungus foul and the vervain sacred: but one practical conclusion I (who am in all final ways the most prosaic and practical of human creatures) do very solemnly beg my readers to meditate; namely, that although not recognized by actual offensiveness of scent, there is no space of neglected land which is not in some way modifying the atmosphere of _all the world_,--it may be, beneficently, as heath and pine,--it may be, malignantly, as Pontine marsh or Brazilian jungle; but, in one way or another, for good and evil constantly, by day and night, the various powers of life and death in the plants of the desert are poured into the air, as vials of continual angels: and that no words, no thoughts can measure, nor imagination follow, the possible change for good which energetic and tender care of the wild herbs of the field and trees of the wood might bring, in time, to the bodily pleasure and mental power of Man.
32. II. VIOLA PSYCHE. Ophelia's Pansy.
The wild heart's-ease of Europe; its proper colour an exquisitely clear purple in the upper petals, gradated into deep blue in the lower ones; the centre, gold. Not larger than a violet, but perfectly formed, and firmly set in all its petals. Able to live in the driest ground; beautiful in the coast sand-hills of Cumberland, following the wild geranium and burnet rose: and distinguished thus by its power of life, in waste and dry places,