PAPAVER RHOEAS. 63 



side ; and be able afterwards to study at our leisure, or accept 

 without doubt or trouble, facts of apparently contrary mean- 

 ing. And the practical lesson which I wish to leave with the 

 reader is, that lovely flowers, and green trees growing in the 

 open air, are the proper guides of men to the places which 

 their maker intended them to inhabit ; while the flowerless 

 and treeless deserts of reed, or sand, or rock, are meant to 

 be either heroically invaded and redeemed, or surrendered to 

 the wild creatures which are appointed for them ; happy and 

 wonderful in their wild abodes. 



Nor is the world so small but that we may yet leave in it 

 also unconquered spaces of beautiful solitude ; where the 

 chamois and red deer may wander fearless, nor any fire of 

 avarice scorch from the Highlands of Alp, or Grampian, the 

 rapture of the heath, and the rose. 



CHAPTER V. 



PAPAVER RHOEAS. 



BRANTWOOD, July 11 &, 1875. 



1. CHANCING to take up yesterday a favourite old book, 

 Mavor's British Tourists, (London, 1798,)! found in its fourth 

 volume a delightful diary of a journey made in 1782 through 

 various parts of England, by Charles P. Moritz of Berlin. 



And iu the fourteenth page of this diary I find the follow- 

 ing passage, pleasantly complimentary to England : 



" The slices of bread and butter which they give you with 

 your tea are as thin as poppy leaves. But there is another 

 kind of bread and butter usually eaten with tea, which is 

 toasted by the fire, and is incomparably good. This is called 

 ' toast.' " 



I wonder how many people, nowadays, whose bread and 

 butter was cut too thin for them, would think of comparing 

 the slices to poppy leaves ? But this was in the old days of 

 travelling, when people did not whirl themselves past corn- 

 fields, that they might have more time to walk on paving- 



