186 REMARKS ON THE LILAC. 



ARTICLE II. 



REMARKS ON THE LILAC- 



BY FLORA. 



The lilac, various in array, now white, 



Now sanguine, and her beauteous head now set 



With purple spikes pyramidal, as if 



Studious of ornament, yet unresolved 



Which hue she most approved, she chose them all." 



Cowper. 



The delightful sensation which the lovely tints of this elegant flower, 

 and its fragrance, produce on us in the month of May, has heen 

 compared to the first emotions of love, for nature seems to have 

 ordained that mortals should not be permitted to see the one or feel 

 the other with indifference ; for who can behold the flexible and 

 modest, yet dignified clusters of this charming flower, whose colours 

 vary at every movement, and so sweetly descend from the finest 

 violet down to the silvery white, without regretting the short dura- 

 tion of so divine a gift. 



Perhaps we have no flower that gives, or an imagination strong 

 enough to conceive, greater harmony than is afforded in the happy 

 gradation of colour from the purple bud to the. almost colourless 

 flower of these charming groups, around which the light plays and 

 dissolves itself into a thousand shades, which all blending in the 

 same tint, form that incomparable combination that rivets the atten- 

 tion of the most indifferent observer, and throws the painter into 

 despair. We are told Spaendonk himself dropped his pencil before 

 a bunch of lilac; for Flora seems to have designed the. thyrsi of the 

 lilac to please the artist by their delicacy, and to tantalize him by 

 their varying tints. 



The harmony of colours is so complete in the lilac, that when we 

 place a bunch of the white flowers on a branch of the purple variety, 

 an offensive harshness is instantly observed ; nor will the more deli- 

 cate green of the first kind assimilate with the purple tyrus of the 

 latter, without displeasing the eye. 



In the floral language of the east, where this flowering shrub is a 

 native, and where spontaneously 



" the lilac hangs to view 



Its bursting gems in clusters blue," 



