He was always drawing analogies between children and flowers, and there was no mere fancy in the well-known lines:

" And tis and ever was my wish and way To let all flowers live freely, and all die Whene'er their genius bids their soul depart, Among their kindred in their native place. I never pluck the rose; the violet's head Hath shaken with my breath upon its bank And not reproached me; the ever sacred cup Of the pure lily hath, between my hands, Felt safe, unsoiled, nor lost one grain of gold."

In his garden, he would bend over the flowers with a sort of worship, but rarely touched one of them.

" I remember," he wrote to Southey in 1811, " a little privet which I planted when I was about six years old, and which I considered the next of kin to me after my mother and elder sister. Whenever I returned from school or college, for the attachment was not stifled in that sink, I felt something like uneasiness till I had seen and measured it."

The form which the notoriety of this sentiment took in the Florentine legend was that he had one day, after an imperfect dinner, thrown the cook out of the window, and, while the man was writhing with a broken limb, ejaculated, " Good God! I forgot the violets."

Cut off the flowers of roses as they fade; the second crop will be much the better for the attention. Seeds of all flowering plants should also be taken off. All this assists the duration of the blooming season.