ISAAC DISRAELI 231 



such a season ; of that pure pleasure, which seems to snatch us 

 away from all that is of the earth, to give us a foretaste of heaven. 

 The verdure had a new freshness, and took beauty from the last 

 rays of the sinking sun ; all things were instinct with a soft 

 splendour; the trees waved tenderly their majestic crests; the 

 air was full of balm, and the nightingales interchanged sighs of 

 love, which yielded to accents of pleasure and joy. 



I walked gently in an alley of young plane-trees, which I 

 planted a few years since. Above all the vague incomplete 

 impressions and images, which were born of the presence of 

 the objects and my moods, hovered this feeling of the infinite 

 which bears us onward sometimes towards a world superior to 

 phenomena, towards this world of realities, which links itself 

 to God, as the first and only reality. It seems in this condition, 

 when all sensations without and within are calm and happy, as 

 if there were a peculiar sense appropriate to heavenly things, 

 which, wrapped up in the actual fashion of our existence, is 

 destined perhaps to develop itself one day, when the soul shall 

 have quitted its mortal husk. — His Life and Thoughts {May 17, 



1815). 



'T^HERE has been a class of men, whose patriotic affection, or ISAAC 



^ whose general benevolence, have been usually defrauded of the P^f^'g ^H 

 gratitude their country owes them : these have been the introducers 

 of new flowers, new plants, and new roots into Europe ; the greater 

 part which we now enjoy was drawn from the luxuriant climates of 

 Asia, and the profusion which now covers our land originated in 

 the most anxious nursing, and were the gifts of individuals. 

 Monuments are reared, and medals struck to commemorate 

 events and names which are less deserving our regard than those, 

 who have transplanted into the colder regions of the North, the 

 rich fruits, the beautiful flowers, and the succulent pulse and 

 roots of more favoured spots ; and carrying into their own country, 

 as it were, another Nature, they have, as old Gerard well expresses 



