122 BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 



childhood, till he seemed choking with emotion, and suffused with 

 silent tears. So deep in the heart is the love of flowers, that, once 

 awakened, it becomes the well-spring of a renewed and beautiful 

 existence. Let us then live on flowers from the fields, and golden 

 beams of the blue ether ! 



It was the love of flowers which gave tone and vigour to the poets 

 of old, and made their pages redolent with perfume and loveliness. 

 The wisdom of Solomon was so much the greater that he loved 

 flowers, and it is the same sentiment which embalms the pages of 

 Spenser, Chaucer, Clare, Carrington, Gilbert White, and Chatterton, 

 and makes them teem with living beauty, and a lustre, like unclouded 

 sunshine in the month of June. If the love of flowers was not in- 

 herent in our hearts, we should not feel the freshness and brilliancy 

 of their descriptions of nature, sweeping over the spirit like a frag- 

 ment of old music, or breathings from a blossom-scented valley. Now 

 we can go away to the silvery streams in company with old Izaak 

 Walton, where the whirling currents play with the reeds and water- 

 flags, and the green willows bow low to kiss the flowing stream ; then 

 we remember the milkmaid, and the draught of cow's-milk ; the 

 shelter under the honeysuckle hedge ; the fish fried in cowslips ; the 

 ( little sleeping-room, smelling sweetly of lavender; and the flowers, 

 which old Izaak thought too beautiful to be seen at any other times 

 than holidays. The good old fellow delighted in his angle, and he 

 learnt to love nature all the more, and although we regard angling as 

 an unnecessary and wanton cruelty, in itself destitute of poetry, yet 

 we love the old man, who in the innocence of his heart could sing : — 



" I in these flowery meads would be, 

 These crystal streams should solace me ; 

 To whose harmonious, babbling noise, 

 I, with my angle, would rejoice." 



If we could have walked with him once or twice on his rambles, we 

 would have taught him by the simple lesson of a flower, that he could 

 enjoy the pleasures of rippling brooks, and blue sunshine, while the 

 finny creatures of the pools were left to sport away their lives in peace. 



Pleasant it is to wander forth, as did Solomonof old, "into the 

 fields, or to lodge in the villages, to see the fruits of the valley, 

 and to go into the gardens and gather lilies ;" and to inhale the 

 perfumes of the banks and fields. The people of Oriental climes 

 have the love of nature more deeply infused into their hearts than 



