grasses, a delicate mist of blue floating on the surface, has always been
an especial delight to me. Finches shake it from the stalks as they rise.
No day, no hour of summer, no step but brings new mazes--there is no word
to express design without plan, and these designs of flower and leaf and
colours of the sun cannot be reduced to set order. The eye is for ever
drawn onward and finds no end. To see these always so sharply, wet and
fresh, is almost too much sometimes for the wearied yet insatiate eye. I
am obliged to turn away--to shut my eyes and say I will not see, I will
not observe; I will concentrate my mind on my own little path of life,
and steadily gaze downwards. In vain. Who can do so? who can care alone
for his or her petty trifles of existence, that has once entered amongst
the wild flowers? How shall I shut out the sun? Shall I deny the
constellations of the night? They are there; the Mystery is for ever
about us--the question, the hope, the aspiration cannot be put out. So
that it is almost a pain not to be able to cease observing and tracing
the untraceable maze of beauty.

Blue veronica was the next identified, sometimes called germander
speedwell, sometimes bird's-eye, whose leaves are so plain and petals so
blue. Many names increase the trouble of identification, and confusion is
made certain by the use of various systems of classification. The flower
itself I knew, its name I could not be sure of--not even from the
illustration, which was incorrectly coloured; the central white spot of
the flower was reddish in the plate. This incorrect colouring spoils much
of the flower-picturing done; pictures of flowers and birds are rarely
accurate unless hand-painted. Any one else, however, would have been
quite satisfied that the identification was right. I was too desirous to
be correct, too conscientious, and thus a summer went by with little
progress. If you really wish to identify with certainty, and have no
botanist friend and no _magnum opus_ of Sowerby to refer to, it is very