108 A BOOK ABOUT THE GARDEN. 



about his daily path ? or why should youth ride more 

 timidly to hounds because it had a flower in its coat? 

 There is a time for all things ; a time to tend some 

 graceful plant, as well to kick a football ; a time to 

 store the heart with gentle attachments and refined 

 tastes, as well as to run and row ; a time to develop 

 the intellectual as well as the physical powers. 



At length, to revert to my own history, a brighter 

 morn dawned upon my darkness. A single star, 

 twinkling in the firmament, first told the advent of a 

 jocund day ; and that star, my friends, was A KOSE. 



As a look, a gesture, a picture, a song, a perfume, 

 may suddenly transport the mind to things and 

 thoughts forgotten half a life, so did this rose, a 

 Salvator Eosa to me, at once revived that early 

 fondness for flowers which had slept as paralyzed as 

 Merlin in the oak, since my childhood laughed 

 among the cowslips. The .ice broke with an instan- 

 taneous crash, and set the river free ; the fog dis- 

 appeared before that single sunbeam as swiftly as the 

 spectre army which beleaguered the walls of Prague; 

 and it was summer-tide once more. Anatomists tell 

 us of cases in which the brain, accidentally injured, 

 or otherwise oppressed, has been relieved after long 

 incapacity, and its powers restored ; we have an 

 account, for example, in the Edinburgh Review, 

 and in an article upon "Brain Difficulties," of a 

 young gentleman whose sagacity was considerably 

 enhanced by a well-timed kick from a horse ; and so 

 was I, on an analogous principle, successfully tre- 

 panned by Dr. Eose, and my floral apprehension 

 again put in working order. The clock struck only 



