HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 293 



have their attractions ; the Mezereum, because it is 

 first coiner in the spring, and shows its modest crim- 

 son tufts of blossoms, while the March snows are lin- 

 gering ; the Forsythia follows hard upon it, with its 

 graceful yellow bells ; and the Weigelia, though far 

 later, is gorgeous in its pink and white but neither 

 of them is to be matched against the old favorites I 

 have named. 



Yet it is after all more in the disposition of the 

 shrubbery, than in the varieties, that a rational pleas- 

 ure will be found. It is not a great burden of bloom 

 from any particular shrub that I aim at. I do not 

 want to prove what it may do at its best, and singly ; 

 that is the office of the nurseryman, who has his ales 

 to make. But I want to marry together great ranks 

 of individual beauties, so that May flowers shall 

 hardly be upon the wane, when the blossoms of June 

 shall flame over their heads ; and June in its turn 

 have hardly lost its miracles of color, when July 

 shall commence its intermittent fires, and light up its 

 trail of splendor around all the skirts of the shrub- 

 bery. I want to see the delicate white of the Clematis 

 (Virginica) hanging its graceful festoons of August, 

 here and there in the thickets that have lost their 

 summer flowers ; and after this I welcome the black 

 berries of the Privet, or the brazen ones of the twin- 

 ing Bitter-sweet. 



