urpass one or two decimetres. Its leaves,
radical, or carried on stolons, (vol. i., p. 158,) are sharp, or oval,
crenulate, or heart-shape. Its stipules are oval-acuminate, or lanceolate.
Its flowers, of sweet scent, of a dark violet or a reddish blue, are
carried each on a slender peduncle, which bends down at the summit. Such
is, for the botanist, the Violet, of which the poets would give assuredly
another description."

17. Perhaps; or even the painters! or even an ordinary unbotanical human
creature! I must set about my business, at any rate, in my own way, now, as
I best can, looking first at things themselves, and then putting this and
that together, out of these botanical persons, which they can't put
together out of themselves. And first, I go down into my kitchen garden,
where the path to the lake has a border of pansies on both sides all the
way down, with clusters of narcissus behind them. And pulling up a handful
of pansies by the roots, I find them "without stems," indeed, if a stem
means a wooden thing; but I should say, for a low-growing flower, quiet
lankily and disagreeably stalky! And, thinking over what I remember about
wild pansies, I find an impression on my mind of their being rather more
stalky, always, than is quite graceful; and, for all their fine flowers,
having rather a weedy and littery look, and getting into places where they
have no business. See, again, vol. i., chap. vi., Sec. 5.

18. And now, going up into my flower and fruit garden, I find (June 2nd,
1881, half-past six, morning.) among the wild saxifrages, which are allowed
to grow wherever they like, and the rock strawberries, and Francescas,
which are coaxed to grow wherever there is a bit of rough ground for them,
a bunch or two of pale pansies, or violets, I don't know well which, by the
flower; but the entire company of them has a ragged, jagged, unpurpose-like
look; extremely,--I should say,--demoralizing to all the little plants in
their neighbourhood: and on gathering a flower, I find it is a nasty big
thing, all of a feeble blue, and with two things like horns, or thorns,
sticking out where its ears would be, if the pansy's frequently monkey face
were underneath them. Which I find to be two of the leaves of its calyx
'out of place,' and, at all events, for their part, therefore, weedy, and
insolent.

19. I perceive, farther, that this disorderly flower is lifted on a lanky,
awkward, springless, and yet stiff flower-stalk; wh