68 BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 



lancets, such as the Indians seek while rubbing their bodies with the 

 prickly sela, or the old Romans pined for, when they sowed nettles to 

 rub themselves ? ♦ Heaven knows ! perhaps we get a blessing when 

 we smart the most, and if God wills it, so let it be. 



If all this availed not to make the bramble a dear thing, and teach 

 the true glory of the Land of Blackberries, what shall avail against the 

 fact (which we have intentionally deferred till now), that they were 

 the only food of the poor " Children in the Wood," and that from day 

 to day as they wandered through the dreary wilderness, unwatched by 

 men, but cared for by God — he, with his arm round her little neck, 

 she looking up in his face with a tear in her eye, and amid the occa- 

 sional fears and alarms which beset them, feeling still safe while 

 guarded by her boy. "Who could pluck a Blackberry and think of this 

 without letting fall a tear, and again thanking God that he dwells in 

 a land where the lives and liberties of babes are so sacred, that that 

 old story never yet failed to move a heart, even if it were a heart of 

 stone; thanking God that it is the land of baby love, of boyish glee, 

 and of Blackberries. Ah ! the robin comes now year by year and 

 strews leaves upon the graves of innocence, — ^ ature has a higher 

 care for her children, and the daisies will grow over the grave of 

 Keats, and the blue violet will linger about the resting-place of Shelley. 



Well, with childhood's rosy memories, with antique legends and 

 histories, ranging from that earliest age when men fed upon the 

 simplest productions of the ground, when 



Content with food which Nature freely bred, 

 On wildings and on strawberries they fed ; 

 Cornels and bramble-berries gave the rest, 

 And falling acorns furnished out a feast, t 



down to Rosalind and the " Children in the Wood," together with no 

 end cf uses in medicine and the arts, and that grandest of all uses, the 

 making of conserves, preserves, tarts, pies, and puddings, and mingled 

 with damsons, the richest syrup in the catalogue of modern confec- 

 tionery, we say again, — Heaven bless the brambles, and all cheer to 

 the Land of Blackberries ! 



From the silent wood, by a road to the left, we passed into a 

 picturesque region of farmhouses and ancient homesteads; down a 

 steep hill which gave us another view of the splendid coimtry we had 



* Camden's Britannia. t Drjden's Virgil. 



