108 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 



long summer days till twilight dimmed our eyes, or hugged 

 in our arm-chairs over the huge winter fire that we have 

 viewed with such complacency glittering in their gay eoats 

 along our study wall they must moulder like their master 

 doomed, like him, to be the sport of worms. The 

 precious imprints of Aldus and the gorgeous tooling of 

 Grolier are of the earth, earthy. Our prints, our pictures, 

 and our statues, all our most laboured effigies of ideal 

 beauty, will be as nothing, when the fleeting idea we have 

 endeavoured to embody shall itself be realized, and when we 

 shall cast away all our paltry imitations as " childish things." 

 But our flowers, dear flowers, our trees, our gardens, 

 shall remain. The new earth will be a second Eden, and 

 Paradise and innocence shall be restored. Then shall the 

 feathery palm-tree and lowly snow-drop flourish in the same 

 clime. The wilderness will bloom with the rose of 

 Sharon ; the upas will forget its poison ; the nettle will be 

 stingless, and " without thorn the rose ;" the mango and 

 the guava will ripen under the same sky that will allow the 

 eglantine to bind their branches. And this is no idle dream 

 or heathen myth. What may be fancy to others, to the 

 Christian will be faith. He alone can certainly look for- 

 ward, in " the new heavens and the new earth," to that 

 time when " the mountains and hills shall break forth into 

 singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. 

 Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and instead 

 of the brier shall come up the myrtle-tree ; the wilderness, 

 and the solitary place shall be glad for them ; and the 

 desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose." 



PRINTED BY W. CLOWES A>D SONS, STAMFORD STREET. 



