claim to be given and accepted as a token of pure and faithful
love, and to be trusted as a sweet sign that the innocence of affection is
indeed more frequent, and the appointed destiny of its faith more
fortunate, than our inattentive hearts have hitherto discerned.

19. And this the more, because the recognized virtues and uses of the plant
are real and manifold; and the ideas of a peculiar honourableness and worth
of life connected with it by the German popular name 'Honour-prize'; while
to the heart of the British race, the same thought is brought home by
Shakespeare's adoption of the flower's Welsh name, for the faithfullest
common soldier of his ideal king. As a lover's pledge, therefore, it does
not merely mean memory;--for, indeed, why should love be thought of as such
at all, if it need to promise not to forget?--but the blossom is
significant also of the lover's best virtues, patience in suffering, purity
in thought, gaiety in courage, and serenity in truth: and therefore I make
it, worthily, the clasping and central flower of the Cytherides.

* * * * *

CHAPTER IV.

GIULIETTA.

1. Supposing that, in early life, one had the power of living to one's
fancy,--and why should we not, if the said fancy were restrained by the
knowledge of the two great laws concerning our nature, that happiness is
increased, not by the enlargement of the possessions, but of the heart; and
days lengthened, not by the crowding of emotions, but the economy of
them?--if thus taught, we had, I repeat, the ordering of our house and
estate in our own hands, I believe no manner of temperance in pleasure
would be better rewarded than that of making our gardens gay only with
common flowers; and leaving those which needed care for their transplanted
life to be found in their native places when we travelled. So long as I had
crocus and daisy in the spring, roses in the summer, and hollyhocks and
pinks in the autumn, I used to be myself independent of farther
horticulture,--and it is only now that I am old, and since pleasant
travelling has become impossible to me, that I am thankful to have the
white narcissus in my borders, instead of waiting to walk through the
fragrance of the meadows of Clarens; and pleased to see the milkwort blue
on my scythe-mown banks, since I cannot gather it any more on the rocks of
the Vosges, or in the divine glens of Jura.

2. Among the losses, all the more fatal in being unfelt,