110 3a£tmin£. 
Stepping further into summer, comes the star-whito 
Jasmine, — that sweet perfumer of the night, which 
only tlivows out its full fragrance when its sister stars 
are keeping watch in the sky ; as if, when the song of 
the nightingale no longer cheered the darkness, it sent 
forth its silent aroma upon the listening air. Many a 
happy home does it garland, and peeps in at many 
a forbidden lattice, where Love and Beauty repose. 
Little did the proud courtiers and stately dames of 
Queen Elizabeth's day dream that this sweet-scented 
creeper (a sprig of which seemed to make the haughty 
haughtier still) would one day become so common as 
to cluster around and embower thousands of humble 
English cottages, — a degradation which, could they but 
have witnessed, would almost have made evei'y plait 
of their starched ruifs bristle up, like " quills upon the 
fretful porcupine." Beautiful are its long, drooping, 
dark-green shoots, trailing around the trellis-work of a 
door-way, like a green curtain embroidered with silver 
flowers ; while here and there the queenly Moss-Rose, 
creeping in and out like the threads of a fanciful tapes- 
try, shows its crimson face amid the embowered green, 
— a beautiful lady peeping through a leaf-clad casement. 
A lover on the Indian Sea, 
Sighing for her left far behind, 
Inhaled the scented Jasmine tree, 
As it perfumed the evening wind : 
Shoreward he steered at dawn of day, 
And saw the coast all round embowered, 
And brought a starry sprig away. 
For her by whose green cot it flowered. 
