124 BRAlvi^LES AND BAY LEAVES. 



The flowers of the wild have ever a greater hold upon the affec- 

 tions than the nurtured beauties of the garden or conservatory. Wild 

 flowers form a chief part of the love of country, they are our asso- 

 ciates in early life, and recal, in after years, the scenes and recollec- 

 tions of our youth ; they are the true philanthropists of nature, and 

 their generous and smiling faces, give us kindly greetings and sweet 

 memories of the first impulses of love and friendship ; they bloom 

 for all who care to seek them, and smile in the summer's sun, and 

 brave the winter's sleet right valiantly, bonnily and true. The poor 

 mechanic may leave his dull bench when Sunday comes, and breathe 

 the fresh air on the green hills, and gather cowslips and daffodils to 

 cheer him, and to teach him, that although his frame may be be- 

 grimed and emaciated by the toil of weekly drudgery, yet he has 

 within him a soul capable of feeling, and a spirit which can woo the 

 inspiration of nature, and grow green again in the love of flowers. 

 And why else were wild flowers sent if not to teach and soothe us 

 by their aesthetic loveliness, no less than by their hues and odours, and 

 the links of beauty which they throw around our hearts. " What 

 God has created, that call thou not useless," and wherefore shall we 

 become heedless of them, albeit that they neither feed our stomachs 

 nor clothe our backs, enough that they are beautiful, and that all 

 beauty is the soul's special inheritance; the heart must have some- 

 thing to love or it becomes desolate, and the wild flowers of the field 

 are ministers from heaven to teach us love, and to kindle holy sym- 

 pathies in our breasts — • 



"And such are daffodils 

 With the green world they live in ; and clear rills 

 That for themselves a cooling covert make 

 'Gainst the hot season : the mid forest hrake, 

 Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms." 



Keats. 



Of all things sent from heaven to minister to man's happiness, 

 flowers are the most gentle, confiding, and unresisting; he may crush 

 them beneath his footstep, and their only murmurs are made in the 

 sweet scent which they immediately emit ; they still smile in his face 

 and love him as tenderly as before ; they may be plucked and scat- 

 tered to the four winds of heaven, but a fresh troop bloom in gladness 

 and delight ; they may be gathered by the soft white hand of beauty, 

 to gladden the eye which has never known a tear, and by the hard and 



