THE FLOWER. 49 



for the fruit's sake. The production of the fruit is an added 

 honour to it is a granted consolation to us for its death. 

 But the flower is the end of the seed, not the seed of the 

 flower. You are fond of cherries, perhaps ; and think that 

 the use of cherry blossom is to produce cherries. Not at all. 

 The use of cherries is to produce cherry blossoms ; just as the 

 use of bulbs is to produce hyacinths, not of hyacinths to 

 produce bulbs. Nay, that the flower can multiply by bulb, 

 or root, or slip, as well as by seed, may show you at once 

 how immaterial the seed-forming function is to the flower's 

 existence. A flower is to the vegetable substance what a 

 crystal is to the mineral. "Dust of sapphire," writes my 

 friend Dr. John Brown to me, of the wood hyacinths of Scot- 

 land in the spring. Yes, that is so, each bud more beauti- 

 ful, itself, than perfectest jewel this, indeed, jewel "of 

 purest ray serene ; " but, observe you, the glory is in the 

 purity, the serenity, the radiance, not in the mere continu- 

 ance of the creature. 



3. It is because of its beauty that its continuance is worth 

 Heaven's while. The glory of it is in being, not in beget- 

 ting ; and in the spirit and substance, not the change. For 

 the earth also has its flesh and spirit. Every day of spring is 

 the earth's Whit Sunday Fire Sunday. The falling fire of the 

 rainbow, with the order of its zones, and the gladness of its 

 covenant, you may eat of it, like Esdras ; but you feed upon 

 it only that you may see it. Do you think that flowers were 

 born to nourish the blind ? 



Fasten well in your mind, then, the conception of order, 

 and purity, as the essence of the flower's being, no less than 

 of the crystal's. A ruby is not made bright to scatter round 

 it child-rubies ; nor a flower, but in collateral and added 

 honour, to give birth to other flowers. 



Two main facts, then, you have to study in every flower : 

 the symmetry or order of it, and the perfection of its sub- 

 stance ; first, the manner in which the leaves are placed for 

 beauty of form ; then the spinning and weaving and blanch- 

 ing of their tissue, for the reception of purest colour, or re- 

 fining to richest surface. 

 VOL. I.-4 



