f Veronica spicata;
then, at the nearest opening into the wood, a little foxglove in its first
delight of shaking out its bells; then--what next does the Doctor say?--a
snapdragon? we must go back into the garden for that--here is a goodly
crimson one, but what the little speedwell will think of him for a relative
_I_ can't think!--a mullein?--that we must do without for the moment; a
monkey flower?--that we will do without, altogether; a lady's slipper?--say
rather a goblin's with the gout! but, such as the flower-cobbler has made
it, here is one of the kind that people praise, out of the greenhouse,--and
yet a figwort we must have, too; which I see on referring to Loudon, may be
balm-leaved, hemp-leaved, tansy-leaved, nettle-leaved, wing-leaved,
heart-leaved, ear-leaved, spear-leaved, or lyre-leaved. I think I can find
a balm-leaved one, though I don't know what to make of it when I've got it,
but it's called a 'Scorodonia' in Sowerby, and something very ugly
besides;--I'll put a bit of Teucrium Scorodonia in, to finish: and now--how
will my young Proserpina arrange her bouquet, and rank the family relations
to their contentment?

5. She has only one kind of flowers--in her hand, as botanical
classification stands at present; and whether the system be more rational,
or in any human sense more scientific, which puts calceolaria and speedwell
together,--and foxglove and euphrasy; and runs them on one side into the
mints, and on the other into the nightshades;--naming them, meanwhile, some
from diseases, some from vermin, some from blockheads, and the rest
anyhow:--or the method I am pleading for, which teaches us, watchful of
their seasonable return and chosen abiding places, to associate in our
memory the flowers which truly resemble, or fondly companion, or, in time
kept by the signs of Heaven, succeed, each other; and to name them in some
historical connection with the loveliest fancies and most helpful faiths of
the ancestral world--Proserpina be judge; with every maid that sets flowers
on brow or breast--from Thule to Sicily.

6. We will unbind our bouquet, then, and putting all the rest of its
flowers aside, examine the range and nature of the little blue cluster
only.

And first--we have to note of it, that the plan of the blossom in all the
kinds is the same; an irregular quatre-foil: and irregular quatrefoils are
of extreme rarity in flower form. I don't myself know _one_, except the
Veronica. The cruciform v