1 66 Old Time Gardens 



extends to a few blossoms of field and forest. It is 

 felt to an inexplicable degree by all New Englanders 

 for the Trailing Arbutus, our Mayflower ; and it is 

 this unformulated sentiment which makes us like to 

 go to the same spot year after year to gather these 

 beloved flowers. I am sensible of this friendship 

 for Buttercups, they seem the same flowers I knew 

 last year ; and I have a distinct sympathy with Owen 

 Meredith's poem: 



" I pluck the flowers I plucked of old 

 About my feet yet fresh and cold 

 The Buttercups do bend ; 

 The selfsame Buttercups they seem, 

 Thick in the bright-eyed green, and such 

 As when to me their blissful gleam 

 Was all earth's gold how much ! " 



We have little of the intense sentiment, the inspi- 

 ration which filled flower-lovers of olden times. We 

 admire flowers certainly as beautiful works of nature, 

 as objects of wonder in mechanism and in the profu- 

 sion of growth, and we are occasionally roused to 

 feelings of gratitude to the Maker and Giver of 

 such beauty ; but it is not precisely the same regard 

 that the old gardeners and " flowerists " had, which 

 is expressed in this quotation from Gerarde of "the 

 gallant grace of violets " : 



" They admonish and stir up a man to that which is 

 comelie and honest ; for flowers through their beautie, 

 varietie of colour and exquisite forme doe bring to a liberall 

 and gentlemanly mind, the remembrance of honestie, come- 

 linesse and all kinds of virtues." 



