PREFACE. xxv 



Hang up thy gems on fruit and flower,, 

 Bespangle the dewy ground !. 

 Phoebus, rest on thy ruby wheels 

 Look, and envy this world of ours ; 

 For my fair one now descends the hills, 

 She comes to gather flowers. 



" List ! for the breeze on wings serene 

 Through the light foliage sails ; 

 Hidden amidst the forest green 

 Warble the nightingales ! 

 Hailing the glorious birth of day 

 With music's best, divinest powers, 

 Hither my fair one bends her way, 

 She comes to gather flowers." 



LONDON MAGAZINE, Spanish Romances, No. 3. 



For the most part of our countrymen, I fear they do not 

 allow themselves leisure to admire or enjoy the beauties 

 of nature ; yet it cannot be said that they are utterly in- 

 sensible to them ; for with regard to flowers at least we 

 may observe, that on Sundays every village beau, nay every 

 straggling townsman who comes on that day within reach 

 of a flower, has one in his button-hole. 



It was, perhaps, the general power of sympathy upon the 

 subject of plants, which caused them to be connected with 

 some of the earliest events that history records. The 

 mythologies of all nations are full of them ; and in all 

 times they have been associated with the soldiery, the 

 government, and the arts. Thus the patriot was crowned 

 with oak ; the hero and the poet with bay ; and beauty 

 with the myrtle. Peace had her olive ; Bacchus his ivy ; 

 and whole groves of oak-trees were thought to send out 

 oracular voices in the winds. One of the most pleasing 

 parts of state-splendor has been associated with flowers, as 

 Shakspeare seems to have had in his mind when he wrote 

 that beautiful line respecting the accomplished prince, 

 Hamlet: 



" The expectancy and rose of the fair state." 



