Statfcfyatfon. 7 



to scent your library. Powerful enough they 

 are to have pleased Baudelaire, who, preferring 

 musk to violets or roses, declared, " My soul 

 hovers over perfumes as the soul of others hov- 

 ers over music." There is, indeed, an intoxica- 

 tion, and often a strong association, in the sub- 

 tile odor emitted by certain flowers. Does not 

 the perfume of Lilium auratum, stealing from 

 the spotted petals, recall the reedy jungle and 

 the stalking tiger? Or a gorgeous epiphytal 

 orchid, steeped in its mysterious perfume, does 

 it not simulate unconsciously some strange form 

 of tropic insect or animal life ? I oftener recall 

 a flower by its odor, to which sentiment tena- 

 ciously clings, than by mere characteristics of 

 form or color. What an indelible aroma, that 

 of the fragrant everlasting of the fields !---a 

 wild, haunting odor, as of fallen leaves after the 

 latter rains, when the sun extracts their essences, 

 rather than the characteristic fragrance of a 

 flower. Through its rustling, ashen petals I 

 already inhale the autumn from afar, and an- 

 ticipate the last sad cricket's cry. If Addison 

 be taken for authority, we can not have a single 

 image in the fancy that does not make its first 

 entrance through the sight * a dogma which, 



'" "On the Pleasures of the Imagination." 



