JANFAEY. 33 



I find them a pleasure to me all day as I go along." 

 There nature spoke out in the voice of the humble 

 rustic, and no one who has ever wandered with the 

 zest of the naturalist, but admits the appeal, and 

 assents to the idea that the floral colloquist has 

 something to communicate to the mind worthy of 

 treasuring up in the memory. 



In every stage of life we have sympathies in 

 connection with plants and flowers. Else how is it 

 that even in the gloomiest alleys of our blackest 

 towns we so often notice the broken tea-pot or 

 battered tin can, where some hapless dingy plant 

 that never has flowered, and never will flower, almost 

 vainly strives to keep up a half life in the sooty 

 mould that environs it. Ah ! the poor inmates whom 

 stern necessity has here ingulfed, thus solace them- 

 selves, and with their dusty stems and withering 

 leaves try to recall to their minds the image of 

 that country whose breathing sweets they can only 

 glance at but not enjoy. It would be easy to depict 

 floral images characteristic of every period of life 



" Some flowers o' spring, that might 

 Become your time of day ;"* 



and our own poets would supply abundant exquisite 

 illustrative passages but to these preserved par- 

 terres I must refer the reader for special enjoyment 

 in private contemplations. Suffice it to remark that 

 we may trace flowers, as adorning every path and 

 incident of human joy or woe, in all ages of the 

 world on the brow of the meek smiling blushing 

 bride in the path of the haughty conqueror in the 

 last sad grasp of the withered senior blooming 



Shakspeare. 

 D 



