j88 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 



larger size and less delicately fashioned. It stands 

 in the same relation to the summer that the snowdrop 

 does to the spring. It is simply a snowdrop striving 

 to emulate the lily by its taller stems and leaves, its 

 wider bell-shaped blossom composed of petals all white 

 and similar, only touched on their tips with a faint 

 yellowish green, and affording ample room for the play 

 of the orange stamens. And I have frequently seen 

 in different places in Southern Europe a little flower 

 called the Acis autumnalis, which looks like an au- 

 tumnal snowdrop; the pure snowy blossom of the 

 spring flower being in its autumn representative tinted 

 with a delicate pink blush. We thus find that Nature 

 loves to repeat her forms, and to cast the productions 

 of different seasons into the same mould, with charac- 

 teristic differences which may serve to distinguish them. 

 The autumn crocus is a type of one of the most 

 interesting phenomena of nature and of human life. 

 In many departments there are numerous instances of 

 the recurrence at a later period of something that 

 belongs to an earlier time. The crimson and gold 

 of the sunrise is repeated in the splendour of sunset. 

 The common light of day has the same chromatic 

 border at both its edges. The curtain of night at both 

 its ends is finished off with fringes of rainbow loveli- 

 ness, betraying by its selvage the rich variety of the 

 threads that compose it. The morning star that 

 heralds the dawn of day appears again in the evening, 

 and announces the magic hour once sacred to God's 

 presence, when His voice was heard among the trees 



