8 The Wild Garden. 



and Cinquefoils, and Evening Primroses, and Cle- 

 matises, and Honeysuckles, and Michaelmas Daisies, 

 and Feverfews, and Wood-hyacinths, and Daffodils, 

 and Bindweeds, and Forget-me-nots, and sweet 

 blue Omphalodes, and Primroses, and Day Lilies, 

 and Asphodels, and St. Bruno's Lilies, and the 

 almost innumerable plants which form the flora of 

 regions where, though life is yet rife on every inch 

 of ground, and we are enjoying the verdure and the 

 temperature of our lowland meadows, there is 

 a "sense of a great power beginning to be mani- 

 fested in the earth, and of a deep knd majestic 

 concord in the rise of the long low lines of piny 

 hills; the first utterances of those mighty moun- 

 tain symphonies, soon to be more loudly lifted 

 and wildly broken along the battlements of the 

 Alps. But their strength is as yet restrained, and 

 the far-reaching ridges of pastoral mountains succeed 

 each other, like the long and sighing swell which 

 moves over quiet waters, from some far-off stormy 

 sea. And there is a deep tenderness pervading 

 that vast monotony. The destructive forces, and 

 the stern expression of the central ranges, are alike 

 withdrawn. No frost-ploughed, dust-encumbered 

 paths of the ancient glacier fret the soft Jura pas- 

 tures ; no splintered heaps of ruin break the fair 



