ften
sees married women as good as saints; but rarely, I think, unless they have
a good deal to bear from their husbands. Sometimes also, no doubt, the
husbands have some trouble in managing St. Cecilia or St. Elizabeth; of
which questions I shall be obliged to speak more seriously in another
place: content, at present, if English maids know better, by Proserpina's
help, what Shakspeare meant by the dim, and Milton by the glowing, violet.

* * * * *

CHAPTER II.

PINGUICULA.

(Written in early June, 1881.)

1. On the rocks of my little stream, where it runs, or leaps, through the
moorland, the common Pinguicula is now in its perfectest beauty; and it is
one of the offshoots of the violet tribe which I have to place in the minor
collateral groups of Viola very soon, and must not put off looking at it
till next year.

There are three varieties given in Sowerby: 1. Vulgaris, 2.
Greater-flowered, and 3. Lusitanica, white, for the most part, pink, or
'carnea,' sometimes: but the proper colour of the family is violet, and the
perfect form of the plant is the 'vulgar' one. The larger-flowered variety
is feebler in colour, and ruder in form: the white Spanish one, however, is
very lovely, as far as I can judge from Sowerby's (_old_ Sowerby's) pretty
drawing.

The 'frequent' one (I shall usually thus translate 'vulgaris'), is not by
any means so 'frequent' as the Queen violet, being a true wild-country, and
mostly Alpine, plant; and there is also a real 'Pinguicula Alpina,' which
we have not in England, who might be the Regina, if the group were large
enough to be reigned over: but it is better not to affect Royalty among
these confused, intermediate, or dependent families.

2. In all the varieties of Pinguicula, each blossom has one stalk only,
growing from the _ground_ and you may pull all the leaves away from the
base of it, and keep the flower only, with its bunch of short fibrous
roots, half an inch long; looking as if bitten at the ends. Two flowers,
characteristically,--three and four very often,--spring from the same root,
in places where it grows luxuriantly; and luxuriant growth means that
clusters of some twenty or thirty stars may be seen on the surface of a
square yard of boggy ground, quite to its mind; but its real glory is in
harder life, in the crannies of well-wetted rock.

3. What I have called 'stars' are irregular clusters of approximately, or
tentatively, five aloei