66 HORTICULTURE. 



And you, most sober and practical of men, as you stand in your 

 orchard and see the fruit trees all dressed in spring robes of white, 

 and pink, and blush, and immediately set about divining what a 

 noble crop you will have, "if nothing happens" meaning, thereby, 

 if every thing happens as nature for the most part makes it happen 

 you, too, are a little of a poet in spite of yourself. You imagine 

 you hope you believe and, from that delicate gossamer fabric of 

 peach-blossoms, you conjure out of the future, bushels of downy, 

 ripe, ruddy, and palpable, though melting rareripes, every one of 

 which is such as was never seen but at prize exhibitions, when gold 

 medals bring out horticultural prodigies. If this is not being a poet 

 a practical one, if you please, but still a poet then are there no 

 gay colors in peacocks' tails. 



And as for our lady readers in the country, who hang over the 

 sweet firstlings of the flowers that the spring gives us, with as fresh 

 and as pure a delight every year as if the world (and violets) were 

 just new born, and had not been convulsed, battered, and torn by 

 earthquakes, wars, and revolutions, for more than six thousand years ; 

 why, we need not waste time in proving them to be poets, and their 

 lives or at least all that part of them passed in delicious rambles 

 in the woods, or sweet toils in the garden pure poetry. However 

 stupid the rest of creation may be, they, at least, see and understand 

 that those early gifts of the year, yes, and the very spring itself, are 

 types of fairer and better things. They, at least, feel that this won- 

 derful resurrection of life and beauty out of the death-sleep of win- 

 ter, has a meaning in it that should bring glad tears into our eyes, 

 being, as it is, a foreshadowing of that transformation and awaken- 

 ing of us all in the spiritual spring of another and a higher life. 



The flowers of spring are not so gay and gorgeous as those of 

 summer and autumn. Except those flaunting gentlemen-ushers the 

 Dutch tulips (which, indeed, have been coaxed into gay liveries 

 since Mynheer fell sick of flori-mania), the spring blossoms are 

 delicate, modest, and subdued in color, and with something more of 

 freshness and vivacity about them than is common in the lilies, 

 roses, and dahlias of a later and hotter time of the year. The fact 

 that the violet blooms in the spring, is of itself enough to make the 

 season dear to us. We do not now mean the pansy, or three-col- 



