THE LOVE OF FLOWERS. 127 



and hills and forests, for our school and play-ground; when quiet 

 nooks enclosed us with their greenness, and we found companions in 

 the wild bee, and the morning breezes, and in everything which wore 

 the impress of beauty, whether animate or inanimate ; when all things 

 were clothed with beauty, and were worshipped with a veneration 

 beyond utterance ; when each leaf and flower was a palace of sweet 

 sights and scents, and the bending boughs were woven into fairy 

 bowers of enchantment, and touched us with heaven's own glorious 

 sunshine ; when we picked up lessons of love and delight by river 

 sides, by brooks, and hawthorn paths, in quiet glens and in green 

 fields, and inhaled, from every passing breeze, health, intelligence, and 

 joy ; when all things grew and expanded into broad and living hope, 

 calm, lovely, promising, and serene, as a bright vision by a sick man's 

 bed. And then, too, the holy memories which they embalm in their 

 folded buds and undewed chalices — memories fraught with sorrow, 

 but not less welcome to our hearts. Tender recollections, perchance 

 of parents now sleeping in green repose in the ivied churchyard, 

 though far divided from us by a gulf of worldly cares and sordid 

 interests, no longer controlling our actions with a judicious watch- 

 fulness and care, no longer checking us as we are about to pluck the 

 fatal weeds of folly, and to inhale the breath of the sinful blossoms 

 which pleasure scatters in our path — beautiful and fragrant, but 

 fraught with the bane of misery — luring us to tarry in voluptuous 

 bowers, and steep our souls in sensual delights, where repentance and 

 self-reproach, for precious time thus squandered and irrevocably lost, 

 come upon us as a reward, and give, in return for excess of light, a 

 maddening despair and blindness. 



" Oh, lovely flowers! the earth's rich diadem, 

 Emblems are ye of heaven, and heavenly joy, 

 And starry brilliance in a vrorld of gloom ; 

 Peace, innocence, and guileless infancy 

 Claim sisterhood with you, and holy is the tie." 



Mrs. Hemans. 



And what so pure and worthy of our love as the sweet flowers which 

 bloom along our pathway, ever seeking to find a place in our bosoms, 

 and to blend by association of ideas, the experiences with the pleasures 

 of life; refreshing the worn mind with waters from the untainted 

 fountain of pure feeling, which flows from the emerald meadows of 

 childhood, and leading us from the world's thorny and flowerless 



