THE LOVE OF FLOWEjRS. 125 



iron hand of toiling industry to perfume and beautify a close and 

 murky dwelling-place. 



It was the awakening of the sentiment of love for flowers which 

 brought back the prisoner of Fenestrella to the acknowledgment of a 

 God ; maddened by solitude, and exhausted by profligacy, and the 

 unceasing anxieties of a troubled soul, he denied his Maker, and cast 

 himself into the black and desolate regions of infidelity ; but, while 

 expiating, within the walls of a prison, for the rash impetuosities of 

 his youth, a little flower springs up between the chinks of the stones, 

 and becomes to him a messenger of love and mercy, while his soul is 

 on the very threshold of moral despair. So, too, was the heart of the 

 botanist, Douglas, cheered in his toilsome wanderings in America, 

 when he met with a blooming primrose high up on the bald summit 

 of a rocky mountain, where the clouds rolled in darkness, and mingled 

 their dense whiteness with the giant masses of eternal snow. The 

 explorers of the rocky mountains of the west were, in a like manner, 

 comforted, and reminded of the flowery valleys and fertile plains which 

 they had left far behind them, when, amid the desolate and barren 

 hills, where not even a blade of grass was to be seen for miles, they 

 saw a little bee, humming along as if in quest of flowers, and in a 

 region many thousand feet above the level of the sea. " "Who has for- 

 gotten the exultation of Vaillant over a flower in the torrid wastes of 

 Africa ? or the afi'ecting mention of the influence of a flower upon the 

 mind of Mungo Park, in the time of suifiering and despondency, in the 

 heart of the same savage country ?" * 



Schimmelpenninck f tells an anecdote of the philosopher of Geneva, 

 which illustrates, in a pleasing manner the close bond of union between 

 mind of the highest order and the simple beauties of nature. During 

 the earliest and happiest years of the life of Eousseau, he was one day 

 walking with a beloved friend. It was summer time, the evening was 

 calm, quiet, and serene. The sun was setting in glory, and spreading 

 his sheeted fires over the western sky, and upon the unrippled surface 

 of the lake ; making the still water transparent with a vivid and glow- 

 ing light. The friends sat on a soft, mossy bank, enjoying the calm 

 loveliness of the scene, and conversing upon the varied phases of 

 human life, in the unaffected sincerity of true friendship. At their 



* Anne Pratt. 

 + " Theorj' of Beauty and Deformity-" 



