230 OUR WILD FLOWERS AND 



vigour of youth, in the autumn of our age * . Many of you will 

 remember Cowley's " Wish," and, mayhaps, with yearning sym- 

 pathy : — 



" Ah, yet, ere I descend to the grave, 

 May I a small house and large garden have ! " 

 " Oh fields ! oh woods ! when, when shall I be made 

 The happy tenant of your shade ? " 



In further proof of these my positions, you will permit me to step 

 aside, and introduce two or three little episodes that appear to have 

 suiEcient interest to excuse the digression. 



Chaucer loved the Daisy so fervently that, he lets us know, it 

 often roused him early from his bed ; and no other spectacle nor 

 favoured game could seduce him from his books. He could lie " the 

 long dale " doing nothing else but " to lokin upon the Daisie," which 

 to him was " the emprize, and the floure of flouris all." If you 

 wish to read some of the most vigorous and delightful poetry in the 

 English language, you can read this great author's " Legende of 

 Good Women" ; and you will not only participate in his enthusiasm, 

 but your hearts will burn within you with a new love for this simple 

 " star of the mead." 



The enthusiasm of Dr. Carey in the same plant was not less 

 sincere, nor less deeply rooted. Born in a low condition of life, 

 Carey raised himself to eminence. He was, as many of you know, 

 one of the most distinguished missionaries of Christianity in India. 

 He was likewise distinguished as a botanist, and became the superin- 

 tendent of the botanical garden at Serampore, in connection with the 

 Baptist College there. While in this situation. Dr. Carey made 

 many an effort to rear the wild plants, or weeds if you will have it 

 sof, of his native English fields ; but his more especial care was to 

 grow the Daisy. He was for long unsuccessful : — at length a single 

 plant came up in a flower-pot, — and nurtured with skill, this flowered 

 in the face of a tropical sun^ and endured its ungenial heat for about 

 two years. Then it died, leaving no succession. I can neither 

 describe the good man's joy when the English plant budded and 

 blossomed, — nor his sorrow when it withered away ; but I know 



* " I am no botanist ; but, like you, my earliest and deepest recol- 

 lections are connected with flowers, and they always caiTy me back to 

 other days. Perhaps this is because they ai-e the only things which affect 

 our senses precisely in the same manner as they did in childhood. The 

 sweetness of the violet is always the same, and when you rifle a rose, and 

 drink as it were its fragrance, the refreshment is the same to the old man 

 as to the boy. We see with different eyes in proportion as we learn to 

 discriminate, and, therefore, this effect is not so certainly produced by 

 visual objects. Sounds recall the past in the same manner, but do not 

 bring with them individual scenes, like the cowshp-field or the bank of 

 violets, or the corner of the garden to which we have transplanted wild 

 flowers." — R. Southey. Life and Correspondence, iii. p. .313. 



t " Weeds have been called flowers out of place. I fear the place most 

 people \\ould assign them is too limited." Wordsworth. Memohs, ii. 

 p. 310. 



