43.  What the colours of flowers, or of birds, or of precious stones, or of the sea and air, and the blue mountains, and the evening and the morning, and the clouds of Heaven, were given for—­they only know who can see them and can feel, and who pray that the sight and the love of them may be prolonged, where cheeks will not fade, nor sunsets die.

44.  And now, to close, let me give you some fuller account of the reasons for the naming of the order to which the violet belongs, ‘Cytherides.’

You see that the Uranides, are, as far as I could so gather them, of the pure blue of the sky; but the Cytherides of altered blue;—­the first, Viola, typically purple; the second, Veronica, pale blue with a peculiar light; the third, Giulietta, deep blue, passing strangely into a subdued green before and after the full life of the flower.

All these three flowers have great strangenesses in them, and weaknesses; the Veronica most wonderful in its connection with the poisonous tribe of the foxgloves; the Giulietta, alone among flowers in the action of the shielding leaves; and the Viola, grotesque and inexplicable in its hidden structure, but the most sacred of all flowers to earthly and daily Love, both in its scent and glow.

Now, therefore, let us look completely for the meaning of the two leading lines,—­

  “Sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes,
  Or Cytherea’s breath.”

45.  Since, in my present writings, I hope to bring into one focus the pieces of study fragmentarily given during past life, I may refer my readers to the first chapter of the ‘Queen of the Air’ for the explanation of the way in which all great myths are founded, partly on physical, partly on moral fact,—­so that it is not possible for persons who neither know the aspect of nature, nor the constitution of the human soul, to understand a word of them.  Naming the Greek gods, therefore, you have first to think of the physical power they represent.  When Horace calls Vulcan ‘Avidus,’ he thinks of him as the power of Fire; when he speaks of Jupiter’s red right hand, he thinks of him as the power of rain with lightning; and when Homer speaks of Juno’s dark eyes, you have to remember that she is the softer form of the rain power, and to think of the fringes of the rain-cloud across the light of the horizon.  Gradually the idea becomes personal and human in the “Dove’s eyes within thy locks,"[10] and “Dove’s eyes by the river of waters” of the Song of Solomon.

46.  “Or Cytherea’s breath,”—­the two thoughts of softest glance, and softest kiss, being thus together associated with the flower:  but note especially that the Island of Cythera was dedicated to Venus because it was the chief, if not the only Greek island, in which the purple fishery of Tyre was established; and in our own minds should be marked not only as the most southern fragment of true Greece, but the virtual continuation of the chain of mountains which separate the Spartan from the Argive territories, and are the natural home of the brightest Spartan and Argive beauty which is symbolized in Helen.