558 WILD FLOWEKS OF 



Yet notwithstanding all the desolation that may be 

 pictured or imagined to exist out-of-doors, it is not, 

 however, to be forgotten that 



"The love-lit winter home," 



has peculiar charms at this period, and fortunately 

 the " Botanical Looker-Out," is licensed to glance at, 

 if not to mingle in, the pleasures of the season, when 

 he looks round and sees the market-place overspread 

 with glistening broad-leaved laurel; tortuous ivy, 

 glossy-leaved and black-berried ; holly, glorious, 

 secure, and long-enduring, with its curling spinous 

 leaves, and thick-clustered scarlet berries ; and boy 

 after boy, laden and overwhelmed beneath the weight 

 of toppling bushes of white-berried mistletoe. Still, 

 then, old customs endure ; there is a demand now for 

 evergreens at this season, as there ever has been, from 

 the days of the sylvan Druids, downwards aye, and 

 "in the old times before them;" and yet, strange 

 to say, this poetical clinging to old observances 

 remains only in the middle, or, indeed, more exclu- 

 sively, in the lower classes of society. Perhaps the 

 Botanic Gar -den , or the Botanical Register, with their 

 coloured plates, may adorn the drawing-rooms of the 

 wealthy cultivators of science, the green-house bou- 

 quet sparkle in the china vase, or hyacinths stud the 

 sideboard, in their coloured glasses : but the bright 

 holly, the green ivy, and the white-berried mistletoe, 

 with all their mirth-inspiring associations, are banished 

 to the hall, the kitchen, and the cottage. Here, and 

 in the song of the poet, they take their refuge ; and, 

 as even the symbol of mirth and enjoyment, charms 

 the mind, so the cottager, hoisting the old-remembered 

 evergreens, fondly fancies, that at the name of Christ- 



