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                                                  2. 
                          THE PLEASURES OF MEMORY. 
          Vinca major cwrulea.                                  The large
blue Periwinkle. 
               Natural Order,                                           
Class and Order. 
               VINCE)E.                                          PENTANDRIA
MONOGYNIA. 
MILLER says that botanists formerly called this plant Pervinca, from the
Latin pervincere, ' to overcome 
thoroughly,' because it resists the winter's cold: it has also been named
Clematis, for the same reason 
as the Clematis now so called bears that name, from its tendency to climb
upon neighbouring plants. 
                             " Perchance 'tis very childishness that
weaves 
                               Fancies with flowers, and borrows from their
hue 
                               A colour for our thoughts ;-but if it be,
                               It is a weakness that will win a smile, 
                               Not tempt a frown from sage Philosophy; 
                               Or if he frown, in sooth, he's not the sage
                               Men take him for,         " 
     Rousseau tells us, that walking with Madame Warren, she suddenly exclaimed,
" There is the 
Periwinkle yet in flower." Being too short-sighted to see the plant
on the earth without stooping, he 
had never observed the Periwinkle: he gave it a passing glance, and saw it
no more for thirty years. 
At the end of that period, as he was walking with a friend, " having
then begun," he says, " to 
herbarize a little, in looking among the bushes by the way, I uttered a cry
of joy: ' Ah, there is the 
Periwinkle!' and it was so."  This he gives as an instance of the vivid
recollection he had of every 
incident occurring at a particular period of his life; hence the Periwinkle
has been chosen by the 
admirers of Rousseau as the symbol of the Pleasures of Memory. It is placed
here, a simple memento 
of the great bard of Abbotsford ; the azure teint of the flower being a simile
of his chaste and elegant