OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS 



Can we conceive what humanity would 

 be if it did not know the flowers ? If 

 these did not exist, if they had all been 

 hidden from our gaze, as are probably 

 a thousand no less fairy sights that are 

 all around us, but invisible to our eyes, 

 would our character, our faculties, our 

 sense of the beautiful, our aptitude 

 for happiness, be quite the same? We 

 should, it is true, in nature have other 

 splendid manifestations of luxury, ex- 

 uberance and grace ; other dazzling ef- 

 forts of the superfluous forces: the sun, 

 the stars, the varied lights of the moon, 

 the azure and the ocean, the dawns and 

 twilights, the mountain, the plain, the 

 forest and the rivers, the light and the 

 trees, and lastly, nearer to us, birds, 



