KIDD'S OWN JOURNAL. 



375 



save in boyhood, and we are not sure if the 

 cause be wholly physical, but certainly they 

 were sunnier then. Then, as now, we yearly 

 longed for the return of spring and this sweet 

 month of May ; but how differently do we 

 now enjoy them ! Then they called us away 

 to green hedges and bird-nesting. Now we 

 go out to see the flowers— the wild spring 

 flowers, sweetest and fairest of all the year. 



What were the earth without its annual 

 spring and recreation of beauties — the sweet 

 flowers ! They come to us yearly, like old 

 once familiar friends, and every year they 

 come with the same appearance of youth and 

 freshness. They have been called the stars 

 of earth : but they are dearer to us than even 

 the stars. The stars are ever with us, and 

 we become familiar with their eternal same- 

 ness. They are old, and cold, and distant. 

 But the spring flowers cluster about us with 

 the bloom of youth on their cheek, and blow 

 their warm sweet breath on our face. 



The stars are indeed " a mystery and a 

 beauty," and we love to look on them, and 

 think of each as " in his motion like an angel 

 singing to the young-eyed cherubim ; " but we 

 often cannot but look on them too, as worlds, 

 and think of crime, and sorrow, and suffer- 

 ing ; and, indeed, they frequently seem to us 

 to have a gray and care-worn look, as if they 

 were groaning and travailing in pain — 

 wearying till they too be renewed ; but the 

 wild flowers have ever the fresh look of quiet 

 unfathomable sweetness. Who that has ever 

 earnestly gazed on them — " the violet, 

 sweet as are the lids of Juno's eyes or 

 Cytherea's breath," or fairest of all, "the 

 clustered smilers of the bank," the dear blue 

 speedwell — can wonder that they have ever 

 been the favorites of beauty-loving and love- 

 singing poets ? The " forget-me-nots " too ! 

 Many strange surmises have been made 

 respecting the origin of the name. But we 

 think it is just what their first look says to 

 every one — Forget me not ! From their in- 

 significance and position, they are most apt 

 to be omitted and unseen by the careless 

 wayfarer ; but once seen, they are never 

 after to be forgotten. 



How singularly lovely and appropriate are 

 the names of most of our wild flowers! It 

 almost seems to us as if they had named 

 themselves, or at least by their looks sug- 

 gested to the mind of their admirers what 

 they should be called. The " forget-me-not," 

 for instance, and the " speedwell " too, 

 clustering and peeping out as they do, by 

 the roadside hedge-rows with their bright, 

 bland smiles ; how they cheer the traveller's 

 heart ! the last look of each one, as he passes, 

 seeming to speak peace to his soul, and wish 

 him friendly speed on his journey. What 

 should they be called but " speedwell " and 

 " forget-me-not? " and how much lovelier to 



call them so, than to name them veronica 

 chamcedrys and myosotls palustris ! 



How detestable are all the botanical titles 

 of flowers, when compared with their beau- 

 tiful homely English names ! We cannot 

 believe that the rose does smell as sweet 

 called by any other name ; indeed, we never 

 came on one of our sweet favorites in bo- 

 tanical canonicals, without much of the same 

 feeling as a young lady would experience at 

 meeting her dear lap-dog with a pan tied to 

 his tail. With her, we conclude, it has got a 

 most unseemly and unnecessary appendage. 

 Is M philosophy," in the words of the poet, 

 " not harsh and crabbed as dull fools sup- 

 pose," in the names she gives to flowers ? 



But let that be as it may, he certainly 

 misses one of the best blessings of life who 

 has not made to himself friends of the wild 

 spring flowers. At our age we neither are 

 wooed by, nor woo our kin, but the May 

 flowers woo us to the woods and fields ; and 

 there we as fondly woo them, too, as we did 

 long ago. They make us young at heart 

 again ; for they, unlike our kin, look on us 

 and speak to us just as they did twenty or 

 thirty years since. But alas ! though they 

 speak to us as simply and as eloquently, they 

 have other things to say to us than they then 

 had. Their youth and beauty speak to us 

 of other friends, who, once as dear and fair 

 as they, now lie " in cold obstruction," 

 awaiting not the time of the singing of birds, 

 but the blast of the trumpet. Thus they 

 lead us back to life by a pathway marked by 

 the graves of those who have ended their 

 toils before us. It has been our lot — as, 

 indeed, it is the lot of most of us as we enter 

 u the sear and yellow leaf" of life — to see 

 most of our best-loved ones fall before us ; 

 still, as one by one they fell, to some sweet 

 flower, whose fate seemed most like their 

 own, have we told their story, and given to 

 preserve their memory ; so that now there is 

 scarcely a flower, from the pure and pre- 

 mature snow-drop and frail celandine, to the 

 longer-lived primrose and violet, but has a 

 double life ; and yearly, as it comes afresh 

 from death-land, brings with it a tale of some 

 old lost friend. 



Glasgow, May 25. Rolan. 



[We quite agree with "Rolan" in depre- 

 cating the eternal repetition of hard Latin 

 names in connection with flowers, &c. W t e 

 say, with Charles Waterton — let us call 

 all things by their own proper names.] 



Chancery. — Every animal has its enemies. 

 The land-tortoise has two enemies — man and 

 the boa constrictor. Man takes him home 

 and roasts him; the boa constrictor SAvallows 

 him whole, shell and all, and consumes him 

 slowly in the interior. Just so does the Court of 

 Chancery swalloiv up a great estate ! 



