s, better than pearl beads of St.
Agnes' rosary,--folded, over and over, with the edges of their little
leaves pouting, as the very softest waves do on flat sand where one meets
another; then opening just enough to show the violet colour within--which
yet isn't violet colour, nor even "meno che le rose," but a different
colour from every other lilac that one ever saw;--faint and faded even
before it sees light, as the filmy cup opens over the depth of it, then
broken into purple motes of tired bloom, fading into darkness, as the cup
extends into the perfect rose.

This, with all its sweet change that one would so fain stay, and soft
effulgence of bud into softly falling flower, one has watched--how often;
but always with the feeling that the blossoms are thrown over the green
depth like white clouds--never with any idea of so much as asking what
holds the cloud there. Have each of the innumerable blossoms a separate
stalk? and, if so, how is it that one never thinks of the stalk, as one
does with currants?

4. Turn the side of the branch to you;--Nature never meant you to see it
so; but now it is all stalk below, and {130} stamens above,--the petals
nothing, the stalks all tiny trees, always dividing their branches mainly
into three--one in the centre short, and the two lateral, long, with an
intermediate extremely long one, if needed, to fill a gap, so contriving
that the flowers shall all be nearly at the same level, or at least surface
of ball, like a guelder rose. But the cunning with which the tree conceals
its structure till the blossom is fallen, and then--for a little while, we
had best look no more at it, for it is all like grape-stalks with no
grapes.

These, whether carrying hawthorn blossom and haw, or grape blossom and
grape, or peach blossom and peach, you will simply call the 'stalk,'
whether of flower or fruit. A 'stalk' is essentially round, like a pillar;
and has, for the most part, the power of first developing, and then shaking
off, flower and fruit from its extremities. You can pull the peach from its
stalk, the cherry, the grape. Always at some time of its existence, the
flower-stalk lets fall something of what it sustained, petal or seed.

In late Latin it is called 'petiolus,' the little foot; because the
expanding piece that holds the grape, or olive, is a little like an
animal's foot. Modern botanists have misapplied the word to the
_leaf_-stalk, which has no resemblance to a foot at all. We