60 THE BEAUTIES OP APRIL AND MAY. 



splendid and beautifully grand! View the charming Rose, 

 delicate and languish in gly fair! and while you inhale its 

 balmy sweetness, you will be constrained to admire it, not- 

 withstanding its thorny appendages. 



" Rose ! thou art the sweetest flower 

 That ever drank the amber shower; 

 Rose I thou art the fondest child 

 Of dimpled Spring ! the wood-nymph wild ! 

 Resplendant Ro-e ! the flower of flowers, 

 Whose breath perfumes Olympus' bowers ; 

 Whose virgin blush, of chasten'd dye, 

 Enchants so much our mental eye." 



Behold all the pomp and glory of the parterre, where 

 Nature's paint and perfume do wonders. Some rear their 

 heads as with a majestic mien, and overlook, like sovereigns 

 or nobles, the whole parterre. Others seem more modest 

 in their aims, and advance only to the middle stations ; a 

 genius turned for heraldry might term them the gentry of 

 the border ; while others, free from all aspiring airs, creep 

 unambitiously on the ground, and lock like the commonalty 

 of the kind. Some are intersected with elegant stripes, or 

 studded with radiant spots. Some affect to be genteelly 

 powdered, or neatly fringed ; while others are plain in their 

 aspect, unaffected in their dress, and content to please with 

 a naked simplicity. Some assume the monarch's purple ; 

 some look most becoming in the virgin's white ; but black, 

 doleful black, has no admittance into the wardrobe of Spring. 

 The weeds of mourning would be a manifest indecorum, 

 when Nature holds an universal festival. She would now 

 inspire none but delightful ideas, and therefore always makes 

 her appearance in some amiable suit. Here stands a war- 

 rior clad with crimson ; there sits a magistrate robed in 

 scarlet ; and yonder strusts a pretty fellow, that seems to 

 have dipped his plumes in the rainbow, and glitters in all 

 the gay colours of that resplendent arch. Some rise into a 



