ur, in delicacy and earth-purity, is something that one cannot
express his gratitude for--like the mignonette. Their colouring and form
warms us unto dearer feelings. They seem fairer and brighter each
year--not among the great things yet, but so tenderly and purely on the
way. Then I may betray a weakness of my own--and I am glad to--but I
love the honeysuckle vine. Its green is good, its service eager, the
white of its young blossoms very pure and magically made. The yellow of
its maturer flowers is faintly touched with a durable and winning brown
like the Hillingdon rose, and its fragrance to me though very sweet has
never cloyed through long association. Yet clover scent and many of the
lilies and hyacinths and plants that flower in winter from tubers, can
only be endured in my case from a distance."

"Soon he will get to his roses," said the little girl.

"Yes, I am just to that now. It has been an object of curiosity to me
that people raise so many _just roses_. Here is a world by itself. There
is a rose for every station in society. There are roses for beast and
saint; roses for passion and renunciation; roses for temple and
sanctuary, and roses to wear for one going down into Egypt. There are
roses that grow as readily as morning-glories, and roses that are
delicate as children of the Holy Spirit, requiring the love of the human
heart to thrive upon, before sunlight and water. There is a rose for
Laura, a rose for Beatrice, a rose for Francesca.... Do you know that
one of the saddest things in the world, is that we have to hark back so
far for the great romances? Here am I recalling the names of three women
of long ago whose kisses made immortals of their mates, as thousands of
other writers have done who seek to gather a background out of the past
against which to measure their romances.

"You will say that the romances of to-day are not told; that a man and
woman of to-day keep the romance apart of their life from the world--of
all things most sacred. You may discuss this point with eloquence and at
length, but you are not on solid ground. A great romance cannot be
veiled from the world, because of all properties that the world waits
for, this is the most crying need. Great lovers must be first of all
great men and women; and lofty love invariably finds expression, since
greatness, both acknowledged and intrinsic, comes to be through
expression. A great romance will out--through a child or a book or some
mig