A BROKEN STRA W. 



source in the same popular custom ; there is only the 

 difference of time. That which of old served to dethrone 

 a monarch, and revolutionize a nation, is now used only to 

 express the desolation of a heart. Happy are the loving 

 hearts whose discords terminate so well as the revolutions of 

 early times ! Yet far happier they, where dissension never 

 arises, though, it may be, they are few in number, since — 



" Alas — how light a cause may move 

 Dissension between hearts that love ! — 

 Hearts that the world in vain had tried, 

 And sorrow but more closely tied ; 

 That stood the storm when waves were rough, — 



****** 

 A something light as air, — a look, 



A word unkind or wrongly taken^ 

 Oh ! love, that tempests never shook, 

 A breath, a touch like this hath shaken. 

 ***** 

 And hearts, so lately mingled, seem 

 Like broken clouds, — or lilte the stream, 

 That smiling left the mountain's brow, 



As though its waters ne'er could sever. 

 Yet, ere it reach the plain below. 



Breaks into floods, that part for ever !" 



Moore, Lalla Rookh. 



The Broom ,and its kindred genera were great favourites 

 among the Greeks and Romans. One writer says that 

 wherever Cytisus grows, there bees never abandoned their 

 hives ; and Pliny says of him (Aristomachus), that he was so 

 devotedly fond of bees, that for fifty-eight years of his life he 

 continued to raise swarms. The Spanish Broom {Spartium 

 iunceum), a yellow-flowered species, is cultivated for its beauty 



39 



b 



