17. Perhaps; or even the painters! or even an ordinary unbotanical human
creature! I must set about my business, at any rate, in my own way, now, as
I best can, looking first at things themselves, and then putting this and
that together, out of these botanical persons, which they can't put
together out of themselves. And first, I go down into my kitchen garden,
where the path to the lake has a border of pansies on both sides all the
way down, with clusters of narcissus behind them. And pulling up a handful
of pansies by the roots, I find them "without stems," indeed, if a stem
means a wooden thing; but I should say, for a low-growing flower, quiet
lankily and disagreeably stalky! And, thinking over what I remember about
wild pansies, I find an impression on my mind of their being rather more
stalky, always, than is quite graceful; and, for all their fine flowers,
having rather a weedy and littery look, and getting into places where they
have no business. See, again, vol. i., chap. vi., § 5.

18. And now, going up into my flower and fruit garden, I find (June 2nd,
1881, half-past six, morning.) among the wild saxifrages, which are allowed
to grow wherever they like, and the rock strawberries, and Francescas,
which are coaxed to grow wherever there is a bit of rough ground for them,
a bunch or two of pale pansies, or violets, I don't know well which, by the
flower; but the entire company of them has a ragged, jagged, unpurpose-like
look; extremely,--I should say,--demoralizing to all the little plants in
their neighbourhood: and on gathering a flower, I find it is a nasty big
thing, all of a feeble blue, and with two things like horns, or thorns,
sticking out where its ears would be, if the pansy's frequently monkey face
were underneath them. Which I find to be two of the leaves of its calyx
'out of place,' and, at all events, for their part, therefore, weedy, and
insolent.