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a rapture unknown to later years. With what exquisite 

 enjoyment they enter upon the minutest examination of 

 the most common tilings ! The flowers that are their 

 own make them rich with an almost untold wealth. The 

 springing grass to them is like the verdure of a fairy cre- 

 ation, and every bud a miracle in their soft and earnest 

 eyes. 



And then what a host of illustrious names throng upon 

 our memories, and seem to sanctify these pleasant and 

 quiet scenes. I speak not now so much of the poets, who 

 have been forever the chosen interpreters of nature's mys- 

 teries, and wanting whom, she might forever have uttered 

 oracles, sounding to the wise, but vague and indefinite to 

 the general apprehension. But the time would fail me to 

 tell the great and illustrious names of English history, 

 blended with every memory of these endearing pursuits : 

 of Wolsey, magnificent in all his enterprises ; of Sidney, 

 conceiving the delicious dreams of " Arcadia," in his 

 a.ncestral bowers at Penshurst ; of Wotton, flattering the 

 Virgin Queen with his present of orange trees from Italy, 

 still flourishing in their original perfection ; of Temple, 

 whose heart so clung to the delightful recreations of his 

 leisure hours that he directed, by his will, that heart itself 

 to be buried beneath the sun-dial in his garden ; of Eve- 

 lyn, whose very name awakens every pleasing association 

 connected with rural pursuits, and whose noble sentences 

 are full of the heart and soul of one, who loved the soil 

 that bore him, with every emotion becoming a patriot and 

 a man ; of Raleigh, the graceful and gallant, learned and 

 brave ; of Bacon, in the language of Cowley, 



Whom a wise king and Nature chose 

 Lord Chancellor of both their laws ; 



of that Bacon, who would have fresh flowers upon his table 



