xxiv PREFACE. 



understood in this country as it might be, but Mr. Bowring 

 scarcely does us justice in the following observations : 



" In the Peninsula the wildest flowers are the sweetest. 

 There are hedges of myrtles, and geraniums, and pome- 

 granates, and towering aloes. The sunflower and the 

 bloody warrior (Aleli grosero) occupy the parterre : they 

 are 110 favourites of mine. 



" Flowers ! what a hundred associations the word brings 

 to my mind ! Of what countless songs, sweet and sacred, 

 delicate and divine, are they the subject ! A flower in 

 England is something to the botanist, but only if it be 

 rare ; to the florist, but only if it be beautiful : even the 

 poet and the moralizer seldom bend down to its eloquent 

 silence. The peasant never utters to it an ejaculation the 

 ploughman (all but one) carelessly tears it up with his 

 share no maiden thinks of wreathing it no youth aspires 

 to wear it : But in Spain ten to one but it becomes a 

 minister of love, that it hears the voice of poetry, that it 

 crowns the brow of beauty. Thus how sweetly an anony- 

 mous cancionero sings : 



" Put on your brightest richest dress, 

 Wear all your gems, blest vale of ours ! 

 My fair one comes in her loveliness, 

 She comes to gather flowers. 



" Garland me wreaths, thou fertile vale ; 

 Woods of green your coronets bring ; 

 Pinks of red, and lilies pale, 

 Come with your fragrant offering. 

 Mingle your charms of hue and smell, 

 Which Flora wakes in her spring-tide hours ! 

 My fair one comes across the dell, 

 She comes to gather flowers. 



" Twilight of morn ! from thy misty tower 

 Scatter the trembling pearls around, 



