THE LEMON-PLANT. 267 



friends, thus fancifully identified, are still bright 

 and blooming as their gentle representatives ; and 

 very delightful it is to behold them together; 

 more particularly if the friend and the flower un- 

 expectedly meet, the first after a prolonged ab- 

 sence, the other in the earliest beauty of its an- 

 nual re-appearance. The May-flower has greeted 

 me thus ; and others not unconnected with the 

 blossom of May ; and my heart has bounded with 

 a joy that few can realize — with a fond anticipation 

 of future re-appearances, even on earth ; and the 

 more sober, but far more satisfying prospect of 

 eternal re-union in that better land where the 

 flowers fade not, and friends can part no more. 



But I am wandering from the Lemon-plant, 

 and from her whose memory is like it, fragrant 

 and ever-green. Before we met I had heard so 

 much of her extraordinary attainments and ac- 

 knowledged superiority in all that is both brilliant 

 and valuable, that I rather expected something 

 more to be admired than loved : and froze myself 

 as hard as people can freeze, amid the sun-shine 

 of Irish society, under the impression that if I took 

 a fancy to Marie, she w r ould prove too abstract a 

 person to reciprocate it. How much was I mista- 

 ken ! Never in my life, did I behold a softer per- 

 sonification of all that is modest in the truly femi- 

 nine character; arrayed, too, in the meek and 



