y think how delicious it feels to
_garden_ after six months of frost and snow. Imagine my feelings when
Mrs. Medley found a bed of seedling bee larkspurs in her garden, and
gave me at least two dozen!!! I have got a whole row of them along a
border, next to which I _think_ I shall have mignonette and scarlet
geraniums alternately. It is rather odd after writing Reka Dom, that I
should fall heir to a garden in which almost the only "fixture" is a
south border of lilies of the valley!...

TO MISS E. LLOYD.

_Fredericton, N.B._ June 2, 1868.

MY DEAREST ELEANOR--

* * * * *

I can hardly tell you what a pleasure it is to me to have a garden.
The place has never felt so like a home before! I went into my little
flower garden (a separate plat from the other--fenced round, and
simply composed of two round beds, and four wooden-edged borders and
one elm tree) [_sketch_] early this morning, and it seemed so jolly
after the long winter. My jonquils are just coming out, and one or two
other things. In the elm tree two bright yellow birds were cheeping. I
mean to plant scarlet-runners to attract the humming birds. It is
something to see fireflies and humming birds in the flesh, one must
admit!

* * * * *

I cannot echo your severe remarks on the Queen, though I am _quite_
willing to second your praise of the Prince Consort. Her Most Gracious
Majesty is--excuse me--a subject I feel rather strongly about. We are
not--as an age--guilty of much weakness in the way of over loyalty to
anything or any person, and I cannot help at times thinking that it must
be a painful enough reflection to a woman like Queen Victoria, who at
any rate is as well read in the history and constitution of England as
most of us, to know what harvests of love and loyalty have been reaped
by Princes who lived for themselves and not for their people, who were
fortunate in the accidents of more power and less conscience, and of
living in times when you couldn't get your sovereign's portrait for a
penny, or suggest to the loyal and well-behaved Commons that if the
King's health was not equal to all that you thought fit, you would
rather he abdicated. When one thinks of all that noble hearts bled and
suffered and held their peace for--to prop up the throne of Stuart--of
all the vices that have been forgiven, the weaknesses that have been
covered, the injustice that has been endured from King