290 WOOD-PATHS. 



and prodigality of a parterre, there is a never-ending 

 variety of objects to enliven the senses and the imagina- 

 tion. Here are sweet violets dotting the greensward with 

 heaven's own azure ; roses that breathe into the atmos- 

 phere the very aroma of purity ; vines that throw their 

 drapery over branches that form our canopy, making the 

 , air ambrosial with their fragrant blossoms in summer, and 

 tempting our sight with their purple clusters in autumn. 

 Here are mossy couches so soft, so beautiful, so hallowed, 

 that the young maiden who should sit upon them becomes 

 a goddess ; and the student of nature turned pilgrim here 

 would worship her with more devotion than he yields to 

 science. 



Take her, thou young enthusiast, and make her the 

 dryad of this wood. Lead her up this rustic avenue, 

 where violets will breathe out their grateful odors to the 

 pressure of her maiden feet. Seat her in the shade of a 

 draidical oak, and fill her lap with roses, which are the 

 symbols of love, and with the flowers of the blue myosotis, 

 sacred to remembrance. Bind her forehead with arbutus, 

 as unfading as amaranth, and bring for her repast straw- 

 berries that cluster about these daisied grounds. Then 

 will you feel that mankind are unhappy only as they 

 wander from the simplicity of nature ; and that we may 

 regain our lost paradise as soon as we have learned to love 

 nature more than art, and the heaven of such a place as 

 this more than the world of cities and palaces. 



