FLOWERS AS EMBLEMS. 135 



greatest men who have lived. As a moral and poetic 

 observer, he discerns in flowers, not mere gems sparkling 

 on the bosom of Nature, but so many living beings, look- 

 ing up to him from the greensward, and down upon him 

 from the trees and cliffs, and inspiring him with a feeling of 

 sympathy with all the visible world. What can be more 

 worthy of study than this beautiful assemblage of living 

 things, whose relations to each other and to men and ani- 

 mals unfold a thousand singular mysteries, whose forms 

 and colors produce the most delicate conceptions of art, 

 and whose metaphorical characters have rendered them 

 the very poetry of nature ! Eeligion and virtue, science, 

 painting, and poetry, all have their readings in these 

 brilliant pets of the florist and toys of children. The 

 stars of heaven do not convey to our minds a more vivid 

 conception of the mysteries of the universe than the flow- 

 ers that sparkle in the same countless numbers on the 

 earth. 



Let us imagine that the earth had been created without 

 flowers ; that the greensward was sprinkled with no vio- 

 lets in the opening of the year, and that May flung around 

 her footsteps neither daisies nor cowslips ; that summer 

 called out no blossoms upon the trees, and that autumn 

 bound with his ripened sheaves neither asters nor golden- 

 rods, and looked through his frosty eyelids upon neither 

 gentians nor euphrasia ! Let us imagine that the dews 

 cherished nothing fairer than the green foliage of herbs 

 and trees, and that the light of morning, which now un- 

 folds the splendor of millions of tinted corols, sparkled 

 only in the crystal dewdrops ; that the butterfly looked 

 in vain for its counterpart among the plants that no\v 

 offer it their allurements, and that the bee was not one 

 of the living forms of nature, because the fields produced 

 no flowers for its sustenance ! Who would not feel that 

 some unknown blessing w r as denied us ? Who would not 



