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walks, gaze upon the beauty arid the simplicity 

 of the forms displayed, the delicacy and the 

 splendour of the colours, and feast upon the 

 sweetness of the perfume, without feeling an awe 

 and admiration of that Omnipotent source from 

 whence these pleasures are derived. The study 

 of the vegetable kingdom leads the botanist to 

 spots most richly decked with nature's beauties ; 

 to view her stores unrolled, and converse with 

 her charms; to him the heath-clad moor, the 

 lofty mountain and the wild morass, are not the 

 dreary barren wastes they seem to others ; there 

 undisturbed but by the flitting bird, or hum of 

 insect sporting in the noon-tide air, he finds food 

 for contemplation, replete with entertainment and 

 instruction. What is a more perfect emblem of 

 purity than a mountain plant, the flowers of 

 which blushing unseen and glistening with the 

 morning dew, shiver in the breeze ; and does it 

 not forcibly impress upon our minds, that the 

 same hand which reared this lonely plant des- 

 tined, perhaps, to perish unobserved, yet so per- 

 fect in all its parts, and evincing such consum- 

 mate skill, that the same watchful power which 

 hath been exerted for it, cannot be forgetful 

 of man ? Sentiments such as these, excited in 

 the breast of Mungo Park by the sight of a humble 

 flower in the middle of the desert, changed his 

 melancholy forebodings respecting the fate await- 

 ing him, into a cheerful pious dependance upon 

 that all-powerful arm, which in the dreary waste, 

 far from the abodes of man, had raised arid pro- 



