LOVE OF FLOWERS. 



matrons of the advanced year ; they would be im - 

 heeded, 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 affec- 

 tion, that so warms us at this season : to maturity 

 they give pleasure, as a harbinger of the renewal 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 infant 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 neighbours, in harmony and goodwill : 

 but spring flowers are cherished as private friend- 

 ships. 



The amusements and fancies of children, when 

 connected with flowers, are always pleasing, being 

 generally the conceptions of innocent minds un- 

 biassed 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 minds : and I think 

 that it is early flowers which constitute their first 

 natural playthings ; though summer presents a 

 greater number and variety, they are not so fondly 

 selected, We have our daisies strung and wreathed 



