APRIL. 205 



of the forest, seems to illuminate its shady recesses, like a 

 pyre of crimson flame. The willows bearing blossoms either 

 yellow or of a silvery whiteness, occasioned by the down that 

 covers their aments, add a different kind of lustre to similar 

 grounds. When the elm, the red maple, the different willows, 

 and the tremulous poplar, with its purplish aments, happen 

 to be grouped together in front of an evergreen wood, the 

 April sun looks down upon a scene of varied beauty not sur- 

 passed by the floral spectacles that glisten under the brighter 

 beams of the summer solstice. 



We have to lament in this climate the absence of many 

 beautiful flowers, which are associated in our minds with the 

 opening of spring, by our familiarity with English literature. 

 We scfirch in vain over our green meads and sunny hillsides 

 for the daisy and the cowslip, which like so many gems from 

 heaven spangle the fields in Great Britain, and gladden the 

 sight of the English cottager. We have read of them until 

 they seem like the true tenants of our own fields ; and when 

 on a pleasant ramble we do not find them, there seems to be 

 a void in the landscape, and the fields seem to have lost their 

 fairest ornaments. Thus poetry, while it inspires the mind 

 with sentiments that contribute largely to the sum of our 

 happiness, often binds our affections to objects we can never 

 behold and shall never caress. The daisy and the cowslip are 

 remembered in our reading as the bright-eyed children of 

 spring ; and they emblemise those little members of our former 

 family circle, of whom we have heard but have never seen, 

 who exist only in the pensive history of the youthful group 

 whose numbers are imperfect without them. 



In our gardens alone do we find the pensive snow drop, 

 the poetic narcissus, the crocus and the hyacinth. There 

 only is the heartsease, or tri-colored violet, which equally 

 adorns the fresh chaplets of April, and blends its colors with 

 the brown sheaves of October. There only is the lily of the 

 valley, the bright Bethelem Star, and the creeping blue-eyed 

 periwinkle. The heath is neither in our fields nor our gar- 

 dens. The flowers of classic lands, and many plants which 

 are sacred to the muse, are not found in the fields and valleys 

 of the new continent. Our native flowers, for the most part, 



