or dead silver; making the long-weathered stones it grew upon perfect with
a finished modesty of paleness, as if the flower _could_ be blue, and would
not, for their sake. Laying its fine small leaves along in embroidery, like
Anagallis tenella,--indescribable in the tender feebleness of
it--afterwards as it grew, dropping the little blossoms from the base of
the spire, before the buds at the top had blown. Gathered, it was happy
beside me, with a little water under a stone, and put out one pale blossom
after another, day by day.'

10. Lastly, and for a high worthiness, in my estimate, note that it is
_wild_, of the wildest, and proud in pure descent of race; submitting
itself to no follies of the cur-breeding florist. Its species, though many
resembling each other, are severally constant in aspect, and easily
recognizable; and I have never seen it provoked to glare into any gigantic
impudence at a flower show. Fortunately, perhaps, it is scentless, and so
despised.

11. Before I attempt arranging its families, we must note that while the
corolla itself is one of the most constant in form, and so distinct from
all other blossoms that it may be always known at a glance; the leaves and
habit of growth vary so greatly in families of different climates, and
those born for special situations, moist or dry, and the like, that it is
quite impossible to characterize Veronic, or Veronique, vegetation in
general terms. One can say, comfortably, of a strawberry, that it is a
creeper, without expecting at the next moment to see a steeple of
strawberry blossoms rise to contradict us;--we can venture to say of a
foxglove that it grows in a spire, without any danger of finding, farther
on, a carpet of prostrate and entangling digitalis; and we may pronounce of
a buttercup that it grows mostly in meadows, without fear of finding
ourselves, at the edge of the next thicket, under the shadow of a