THE LOVE OF FLOWERS. 119 



and the step, which was feeble and tottering, becomes firm and stead ■ 

 fast, when nature sheds her sweet influences around us, and of those 

 influences, how fully fraught are flowers. 



The love of flowers is but a manifestation of the upward tendencies 

 of the soul, its aspiration for the good, the beautiful, and the true. 

 Such a love will grow in spite of all untoward influences, making 

 holy and pure the bosom wherein it resides, and giving joys, from 

 which the rude clamour of the world is quite estranged, and which 

 sparkle along the pathway of life, like blossoms in the asphodel mea- 

 dows of Apollo. 



Flowers are friends that change not. In youth, they greet \xs with 

 their sunny smiles ; in age, they speak to us of boyhood, and lead us 

 back to the scenes made dear by recollections of home : year afier 

 year, as we hasten onward to complete the cycle of our being, they 

 still abide with us, and offer solace to our aching heart. And when 

 sickness and sorrow have broken down the spirit, and we lie down to 

 rest, with the red earth for a pillow, the flowers come in joyful troops 

 to guard our resting place from rash footsteps and unhallowed intru- 

 sions. And then the " green grass, and clover, and sweat herbs" — 

 made fragrant by the soft dews and early glances of the sun — sanctify 

 the air which sweeps above our graves ; and all day long the grasses 

 wave in the wind, and the flowers sing sweet dirges over the gree 

 mounds which mark our resting place; and at night, the sentinel 

 stars come forth to keep watch over us, and the flowers becone sor- 

 rowful in the still silence, and gush with dewy tears. 



Every human heart is a well of pure feeling, an inexhaustible 

 spring of deepest love ; albeit its green ways, and quiet avenues may 

 be choked up with misanthropy and care : yet, within that silent 

 chamber are locked up sympathies and aspirations, of which an angel 

 might be proud. Many and great are the struggles of our better life 

 to free itself from the shackles of custom, and to shake off" the dust 

 of chicanery and the world's cold disdain. Oh I come with me, thou 

 toiler in the dusty city ; shake off" the cloud from thy brow ; forget 

 for a while, the pence and shillings for which thou hast soH thy soul ; 

 and I will lead thee under green forest trees, over soft mossy hillocks, 

 and beside cool running brooks, where the water-flags play with each 

 other, and look at their own merry faces in the glassy stream. Come 

 to the thick brake, and lie down upon the grass till thy soul swells 

 within thee. Stay, the noonday heat will make the blackbird and the 



