OLD FASHIONED FLOWERS 265 



all that we owe to the world of marvels which the 

 bees visit. 



Can we conceive what humanity would be if it 

 did not know the flowers ? If these did not exist, if 

 they had all been hidden from our gaze, as are 

 probably a thousand no less fairy sights that are all 

 around us, but invisible to our eyes, would our 

 character, our faculties, our sense of the beautiful, 

 our aptitude for happiness, be quite the same? 

 We should, it is true, in nature have other splendid 

 manifestations of luxury, exuberance, and grace; 

 other dazzling efforts of the superfluous forces: 

 the sun, the stars, the varied lights of the moon, the 

 azure and the ocean, the dawns and twilights, the 

 mountain, the plain, the forest and the rivers, the 

 light and the trees, and lastly, nearer to us, birds, 

 precious stones and woman. These are the orna- 

 ments of our planet. Yet but for the last three, 

 which belong to the same smile of nature, how grave, 

 austere, almost sad, would be the education of our 

 eye without the softness which the flowers give! 

 Suppose for a moment that our globe knew them not: 

 a great region, the most enchanted in the joys of 

 our psychology, would be destroyed, or rather 

 would not be discovered. All of a delightful sense 

 would sleep for ever at the bottom of our harder and 

 more desert hearts and in our imagination stripped 

 of worshipful images. The infinite world of colors 

 and shades would have been but incompletely 



