LOVE OF FLOWERS. 
55 
days ; but, perhaps, it is the early flowers of spring that 
always bring with them the greatest degree of pleasure, 
and our affections seem immediately to expand at the 
sight of the first opening blossom under the sunny wall, 
or sheltered bank, however humble its race may be. 
In the long and sombre months of winter our love of 
nature, like the buds of vegetation, seems closed and 
torpid ; but, like them, it unfolds and reanimates with 
the opening year, and we welcome our long-lost asso- 
ciates with a cordiality, that no other season can excite, 
as friends in a foreign clime. The violet of autumn is 
greeted with none of the love with which we hail the 
violet of spring ; it is unseasonable, perhaps it brings 
with it rather a thought of melancholy than of joy ; we 
view it with curiosity, not affection : and thus the late 
is not like the early rose. It is not intrinsic beauty or 
splendor that so charms us, for the fair maids of spring 
cannot compete with the grander matrons of the advanced 
year; they would be unheeded, perhaps lost, in the rosy 
bowers of summer and of autumn ; no, it is our first 
meeting with a long-lost friend, the reviving glow of a 
natural affection, that so warms us at this season : to 
maturity they give pleasure, as a harbinger of the re- 
newal of life, a signal of awakening nature, or of a 
higher promise; to youth, they are expanding being, 
opening years, hilarity and joy ; and the child, let loose 
from the house, riots in the flowery mead, and is 
“ Monarch of all he surveys.” 
There is not a prettier emblem of spring than an in- 
fant sporting in the sunny field, with its osier basket 
wreathed with butter-cups, orchises, and daisies. With 
summer flowers we seem to live as with our neighbors, 
in harmony and good-will : but spring flowers are cher- 
ished as private friendships. 
The amusements and fancies of children, when con- 
nected with flowers, are always pleasing, being gene- 
rally the conceptions of innocent minds unbiassed by 
artifice or pretence ; and their love of them seems to 
spring from a genuine feeling and admiration, a kind 
of sympathy with objects as fair as their own untainted 
