NEWS OF SPRING 



for the last three, which belong as it were to the same smile 

 of nature, how grave, austere, almost sad would be the educa- 

 tion of our eye without the softening influence which the 

 flowers impart! Suppose, for a moment, that our globe knew 

 them not: a great region, the most enchanted region in our 

 happier cosmos, would be destroyed, or rather would not be 

 discovered. All of a delightful sense would sleep for ever 

 in our harder and more desert hearts and in our imagination 

 stripped of worshipful images. The infinite world of colours 

 and shades would have been but incompletely revealed to us 

 by a few rents in the sky. The miraculous harmonies of light 

 at play, ceaselessly inventing new joys, seeming to revel in 

 itself, would be unknown to us ; for the flowers first broke up 

 the prism and formed the most subtle portion of our sight. 

 And the magic garden of perfumes : who would have opened 

 its gate to us? A few grasses, a few gums, a few fruits, the 

 breath of the dawn, the smell of the night and the sea would 

 have told us that beyond our eyes and ears there existed a 

 shut paradise where the air which we breathe changes into 

 delights for which we could have found no name. Consider 

 also all that the voice of human happiness would lack! One 

 of the blessed heights of our soul would be almost dumb, if 



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