And lilies-of-the-valley somehow fell under the same condemnation.

They were most graceful and elegant to look at (my lady was quite candid about this), flower, leaf, colour--everything was refined about them but the smell.

That was too strong.

But the great hereditary faculty on which my lady piqued herself, and with reason, for I never met with any person who possessed it, was the power she had of perceiving the delicious odour arising from a bed of strawberries in the late autumn, when the leaves were all fading and dying.

"Bacon's Essays" was one of the few books that lay about in my lady's room; and if you took it up and opened it carelessly, it was sure to fall apart at his "Essay on Gardens." "Listen," her ladyship would say, "to what that great philosopher and statesman says.