148 A CHANGE OF FASHION. 



Can it be true that the commonest plants are the most 

 useful? Nature is quite capable of affording us these sur- 

 prises ; nature, who, by her shifting and proteiform move- 

 ments, never ceases to laugh at human theories. But men, 

 as was said long ago, have eyes, though not to see ; and 

 everybody also knows, from his own experience, that he has 

 ears, not to understand ! 



However this may be, the daisy, which, as we have seen, 

 was formerly so extolled for its officinal properties, is now-a- 

 days completely ignored by physicians. What, then, are we 

 to conclude ? That all the remedies in vogue melancholy 

 to confess ! are an affair of fashion. When men shall have 

 resumed perukes, and women abandoned chignons for fur- 

 belows, we shall remember, perhaps, the virtues of the lowly, 

 tender daisy. 



We cannot take leave of our favourite wild-flower without 

 repeating Wordsworth's beautiful stanzas. He takes as his 

 motto a fine passage from Wither, quaint old George 

 Wither : 



" Her [the Muse's] divine skill taught me this, 

 That from everything I saw 

 I could some instruction draw, 

 And raise pleasure to the height 

 Through the meanest object's sight. 

 By the murmur of a spring 

 Or the least bough's rustelling ; 

 By a daisy whose leaves spread 

 Shut when Titan goes to bed ; . . 

 She could more infuse in me 

 Than all Nature's beauties can 

 In some other wiser man." 



