TO A CONTEMPLATIVE MIND. 15 



counter the vicissitudes of life with patient resignation, prepared for 

 whatever may befall. 



There are few things so attracting to the infantine mind as flowers ; 

 and it is natural that it should be so, for innocence and flowers may truly 

 be denominated twin sisters. And how few of us can forget our first 

 attempts at flower -gardening ! and with what delight we rambled 

 by the side of the rocky river to transplant primroses into our little 

 paradise ! Truly those were golden and blissful days, and the bare 

 recollection of them affords a charm which the turmoil of more im- 

 portant years can never altogether obliterate. But how different are 

 the children of to-day from those of five-and-twenty years ago ! In- 

 stead of the common beauties which adorn nature's carpet, almost 

 every village, in this floricultural age, can offer to the youthful vision, 

 in public exhibitions, the sight of some of nature's choicest productions. 

 And thus begins the taste for gardening. And as soon as a child is 

 allowed the management and care of a flower-bed, with what anxious 

 assiduity does he attend to every little change, from the propping of a 

 stem to the assistance required by nature to produce a regularly burst 

 pod, or any of the other little artful expedients of the competing florist ! 

 And with what care does he preserve his blooms till he has to regret 

 nature's decay ! — unlike other children who have no such recreations, 

 and whose every visit to a garden leaves only wreck and demolition 

 behind. Youthful years, thus spent, produce a taste for the beauties 

 of nature, which leaves us only with life ; and to such, undoubtedly, 

 as have felt the calmness of solitude in that portion of their lives, a 

 temporary retirement from the cares of the world during the occasional 

 cessations of business, in more advanced years, affords the purest 

 pleasure. A striking instance of the tenacity with which we cling to 

 the charm of nature is mentioned by the biographer of the elegant, the 

 learned, and the eloquent, but too successful Rousseau, who, in the 

 hour of dissolution, requested his attendants to bear him up to the 

 window of his apartment, that he might behold once more his flower 

 garden, where he had spent so many happy and tranquil hours. 



And at last when the head is " silver'd o'er with gray," when the 

 pleasures of human life are imperceptibly gliding from our grasp, 

 when our mortal frames have become too enfeebled for a longer resi- 

 dence here, and the hour-glass of time is all but emptied of its con- 

 tents for ever, the principles we have acquired in the tranquillity of 



