Proserpina, Volume 2. Ruskin John

and anagallis.

      In the Flora Suecica, the petal-markings are said to be black; in 'Viola lactea' a connected species, (Sowerby, 45,) purple. Sowerby's plate of it under the name 'palustris' is pale purple veined with darker; and the spur is said to be 'honey-bearing,' which is the first mention I find of honey in the violet. The habitat given, sandy and turfy heaths. It is said to grow plentifully near Croydon.

      Probably, therefore, a violet belonging to the chalk, on which nearly all herbs that grow wild—from the grass to the bluebell—are singularly sweet and pure. I hope some of my botanical scholars will take up this question of the effect of different rocks on vegetation, not so much in bearing different species of plants, as different characters of each species.7

      41. IX. VIOLA SECLUSA. Monk's Violet. "Hirta," Flora Danica, 618, "In fruticetis raro." A true wood violet, full but dim in purple. Sowerby, 894, makes it paler. The leaves very pure and severe in the Danish one;—longer in the English. "Clothed on both sides with short, dense, hoary hairs."

      Also belongs to chalk or limestone only (Sowerby).

      X. VIOLA CANINA. Dog Violet. I have taken it for analysis in my two plates, because its grace of form is too much despised, and we owe much more of the beauty of spring to it, in English mountain ground, than to the Regina.

      XI. VIOLA CORNUTA. Cow Violet. Enough described already.

      XII. VIOLA RUPESTRIS. Crag Violet. On the high limestone moors of Yorkshire, perhaps only an English form of Viola Aurea, but so much larger, and so different in habit—growing on dry breezy downs, instead of in dripping caves—that I allow it, for the present, separate name and number.8

      42. 'For the present,' I say all this work in 'Proserpina' being merely tentative, much to be modified by future students, and therefore quite different from that of 'Deucalion,' which is authoritative as far as it reaches, and will stand out like a quartz dyke, as the sandy speculations of modern gossiping geologists get washed away.

      But in the meantime, I must again solemnly warn my girl-readers against all study of floral genesis and digestion. How far flowers invite, or require, flies to interfere in their family affairs—which of them are carnivorous—and what forms of pestilence or infection are most favourable to some vegetable and animal 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 of him as the power of rain with lightning; and when Homer speaks of Juno's dark eyes, you have to remember that she is the softer form of the rain power, and to think of the fringes of the rain-cloud across the light of the horizon. Gradually the idea becomes personal and human in the "Dove's eyes within thy locks,"10 and "Dove's eyes by the river of waters" of the Song of Solomon.