The pink is one of the commonest of the flowers in English gardens.  It is a great favorite all over Europe.  The botanists have enumerated about 400 varieties of it.

THE PANSY OR HEARTS-EASE.

The PANSY (viola tricolor) commonly called Hearts-ease, or Love-in-idleness, or Herb-Trinity (Flos Trinitarium), or Three-faces-under-a-hood, or Kit-run-about, is one of the richest and loveliest of flowers.

The late Mrs. Siddons, the great actress, was so fond of this flower that she thought she could never have enough of it.  Besides round beds of it she used it as an edging to all the flower borders in her garden.  She liked to plant a favorite flower in large masses of beauty.  But such beauty must soon fatigue the eye with its sameness.  A round bed of one sort of flowers only is like a nosegay composed of one sort of flowers or of flowers of the same hue.  She was also particularly fond of evergreens because they gave her garden a pleasant aspect even in the winter.

“Do you hear him?”—­(John Bunyan makes the guide enquire of Christiana while a shepherd boy is singing beside his sheep)—­“I will dare to say this boy leads a merrier life, and wears more of the herb called hearts-ease in his bosom, than he that is clothed in silk and purple.”

Shakespeare has connected this flower with a compliment to the maiden Queen of England.

    That very time I saw (but thou couldst not)
    Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
    Cupid all armed, a certain aim he took
    At a fair Vestal, throned by the west;
    And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow
    As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts. 
    But I might see young Cupid’s fiery shaft
    Quenched in the chaste beams of the watery moon—­
    And the imperial votaress passed on
    In maiden meditation fancy free,
    Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell. 
    It fell upon a little western flowers,
    Before milk white, now purple with love’s wound—­
    And maidens call it LOVE IN IDLENESS
    Fetch me that flower, the herb I showed thee once,
    The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid,
    Will make or man or woman madly dote
    Upon the next live creature that it sees. 
    Fetch me this herb and be thou here again,
    Ere the leviathan can swim a league.

Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The hearts-ease has been cultivated with great care and success by some of the most zealous flower-fanciers amongst our countrymen in India.  But it is a delicate plant in this clime, and requires most assiduous attention, and a close study of its habits.  It always withers here under ordinary hands.

THE MIGNONETTE.