WILD FLOWERS OF JULY. 269 



his loved pursuit impel him to the wildest and grandest 

 scenes. Nor does he less than the architect ponder 

 among ruined abbeys and castles, and the plants he 

 gathers there remind him in after days of his excur- 

 sions, and even in the herbarium inspire poetical ideas 

 and -revive dormant images. The poet CAMPBELL un- 

 derstood this, when he apostrophized the "wildings of 

 Nature" in one of his inspiriting lays 



" Of old ruinous castles ye tell, 

 Where I thought it delightful your beauties to findj 

 When the magic of Nature first breathed on my mind, 



And your blossoms were part of her spell." 



"We all allow the raptures of the classical scholar as 

 he fancies he treads upon the site of Troy, or paces the 

 silent halls of the Caesars in the " eternal city ; " we 

 admit the enthusiasm of the antiquary, who picks up a 

 rusty spear-head, or, from some imperfect letters on 

 an old green coin, would lead us back to the days of 

 Carausius and the Antonines and the mere tourist 

 who really aims only to varnish all things with plea- 

 sure, still feels a glow or a thrill, as the great names 

 of olden days echo upon his ear in the wild hall or 

 dark cloister, where he is leading his tittering party. 

 Nor is the botanist without feelings when he contem- 

 plates 



" Trees that have outliv'd the eagle," 



or treads within the recesses of those Silurian woods 

 which Professor PHILLIPS states are, " perhaps, as old 

 as Caractacus," and within whose precincts are trees 

 which we can prove to be older than his day. Not 

 long since a Druidical oak met our view within the 

 precincts of the forest of Dean yes, Druidical ! for 

 its immense dark hollow bole measured in girth 



