growths,--let them leave the people to settle
who like, as Toinette says of the Doctor in the 'Malade Imaginaire'--"y
mettre le nez." I observe a paper in the last 'Contemporary Review,'
announcing for a discovery patent to all mankind that the colours of
flowers were made "to attract insects"![9] They will next hear that the
rose was made for the canker, and the body of man for the worm.

43. What the colours of flowers, or of birds, or of precious stones, or of
the sea and air, and the blue mountains, and the evening and the morning,
and the clouds of Heaven, were given for--they only know who can see them
and can feel, and who pray that the sight and the love of them may be
prolonged, where cheeks will not fade, nor sunsets die.

44. And now, to close, let me give you some fuller account of the reasons
for the naming of the order to which the violet belongs, 'Cytherides.'

You see that the Uranides, are, as far as I could so gather them, of the
pure blue of the sky; but the Cytherides of altered blue;--the first,
Viola, typically purple; the second, Veronica, pale blue with a peculiar
light; the third, Giulietta, deep blue, passing strangely into a subdued
green before and after the full life of the flower.

All these three flowers have great strangenesses in them, and weaknesses;
the Veronica most wonderful in its connection with the poisonous tribe of
the foxgloves; the Giulietta, alone among flowers in the action of the
shielding leaves; and the Viola, grotesque and inexplicable in its hidden
structure, but the most sacred of all flowers to earthly and daily Love,
both in its scent and glow.

Now, therefore, let us look completely for the meaning of the two leading
lines,--

"Sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,
Or Cytherea's breath."

45. Since, in my present writings, I hope to bring into one focus the
pieces of study fragmentarily given during past life, I may refer my
readers to the first chapter of the 'Queen of the Air' for the explanation
of the way in which all great myths are founded, partly on physical, partly
on moral fact,--so that it is not possible for persons who neither know the
aspect of nature, nor the constitution of the human soul, to understand a
word of them. Naming the Greek gods, therefore, you have first to think of
the physical power they represent. When Horace calls Vulcan 'Avidus,' he
thinks of him as the power of Fire; when he speaks of Jupiter's red right
hand, he thinks o