Again, there were fine bright autumn days—days when the garden was full of warm scent and warmer colour—days when the children could swing for hours in the hammock, which hangs between two large Sycamores, and have their tea-table beneath the trees,—days when the still air was only stirred by the patter of a falling chestnut, or the note of some solitary bird, or the sound of church bells far away. Beyond the grass-field, which comes nearly up to the house, was a field of wheat, and we could watch the harvesting, and follow with our eyes the loaded waggons as they passed along by the hedge-row trees.
But such recollections grow thicker as I write, and words, such as I at least can command, do them little justice. I cannot really share with my readers these pleasures of the past, though I like to fancy that they may feel some kindly sympathy, as they remember happy days in gardens dear to them as mine to me.
[NOTES.]
[NOTE I.]
ON THE VIOLA OF THE ROMANS.
I contributed the following note on "The Viola of the Romans," to the Gardeners' Chronicle of September 26, 1874, as I found a correspondent had been adopting Lord Stanhope's views.
Mr. Ruskin in his Queen of the Air wrote, "I suspect that the flower whose name we translate 'Violet' was in truth an Iris" (he is speaking of the Greek ion, but the Viola no doubt is whatever the ion was).
In Lord Stanhope's Miscellanies, second series, which was published in 1872, a paper, which had been previously (in 1830) read before the Society of Antiquaries, treats of the "Viola of the Ancients."