I am obliged, by press of other work, to set down these notes in cruel shortness:  and many a reader may be disposed to question utterly the standard by which the measurement is made.  It will not be found, on reference to my other books, that they encourage young ladies to go into convents; or undervalue the dignity of wives and mothers.  But, as surely as the sun does sever day from night, it will be found always that the noblest and loveliest women are dutiful and religious by continual nature; and their passions are trained to obey them; like their dogs.  Homer, indeed, loves Helen with all his heart, and restores her, after all her naughtiness, to the queenship of her household; but he never thinks of her as Penelope’s equal, or Iphigenia’s.  Practically, in daily life, one often 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.