LOVE OF FLOWERS. 55 



days ; but, perhaps, it is the early flowers of spring that 

 always bring with them the greatest degree of pleasure, 

 and our affections seem immediately to expand at the 

 sight of the first opening blossom under the sunny wall, 

 or sheltered bank, however humble its race may be. 

 In the long and sombre months of winter our love of 

 nature, like the buds of vegetation, seems closed and 

 torpid; but, like them, it unfolds and reanimates with 

 the opening year, and we welcome our long-lost asso- 

 ciates with a cordiality, that no other season can excite, 

 as friends in a foreign clime. The violet of autumn is 

 greeted with none of the love with which we hail the 

 violet of spring ; it is unseasonable, perhaps it brings 

 with it rather a thought of melancholy than of joy ; we 

 view it with curiosity, not affection : and thus the late 

 is not like the early rose. It is not intrinsic beauty or 

 splendor that so charms us, for the fair maids of spring 

 cannot compete with the grander matrons of the advanced 

 year; they would be unheeded, perhaps lost, in the rosy 

 bowers of summer and of autumn ; no, it is our first 

 meeting with a long-lost friend, the reviving glow of a 

 natural affection, that so warms us at this season : to 

 maturity they give pleasure, as a harbinger of the re- 

 newal of life, a signal of awakening nature, or of a 

 higher promise ; to youth, they are expanding being, 

 opening years, hilarity and joy ; and the child, let loose 

 from the house, riots in the flowery mead, and is 



" Monarch of all he surveys." 



There is not a prettier emblem of spring than an in- 

 fant sporting in the sunny field, with its osier basket 

 wreathed with butter-cups, orchises, and daisies. With 

 summer flowers we seem to live as with our neighbors, 

 in harmony and good-will : but spring flowers are cher- 

 ished as private friendships. 



The amusements and fancies of children, when con- 

 nected with flowers, are always pleasing, being gene- 

 rally the conceptions of innocent minds unbiassed by 

 artifice or pretence ; and their love of them seems to 

 spring from a genuine feeling and admiration, a kind 

 of sympathy with objects as fair as their own untainted 



