blossoms make amends for their unsavory roots.” A mixture of loam and sand is a good soil for this shrub ; 
young cuttings will root readily in sand under a handglass. 
In the language of flowers, Dahlia stands for Instability. And flowers do speak a language, a clear and 
intelligible language: ask Mr. Wordsworth, for to him they have spoken, until they excited “ thoughts that 
lie too deep for tears ask Chaucer, for he held companionship with them in the meadows ; ask any of the 
poets, ancient or modern. Observe them reader, love them ; linger over them ; and ask your own heart if 
they do not speak affection, benevolence, and piety. The eloquence of flowers is not perhaps so generally 
understood in this country as it might be, but Mr. Bowring scarcely does us justice in the following 
observations : — 
“ In the Peninsula the wildest flowers are the sweetest. There are hedges of myrtles, geraniums 
and pomegranates, and towering aloes. The sun-flower and the bloody warrior (Aleli grosero) occupy the 
parterre : they are no favourites of mine. Flowers ! what a hundred associations the word brings to my 
mind ! Of what countless songs, sweet and sacred, delicate and divine, are they the subject ! A flower in 
England is something to the botanist, — but only if it be rare; to the florist, — but only if it be beautiful: 
even the poet and the moralizer seldom bend down to its eloquent silence. The peasant never utters to it 
an ejaculation — the ploughman (all but one) carelessly tears it up with his share — no maiden thinks of 
wreathing it — no youth aspires to wear it: But in Spain, ten to one but it becomes a minister to love, that 
it hears the voice of poetry, that it crowns the brow of beauty. Thus how sweetly an anonymous can- 
cionero sings : — 
“ Put on your brightest richest dress, 
Wear all your gems, blest vale of ours ! 
My fair one comes in her loveliness, 
She comes to gather flowers. 
“ Garland me wreaths, thou fertile vale ; 
Woods of green your coronets bring; 
Pinks of red, and lilies pale, 
Come with your fragrant offering. 
Mingle your charms of hue and smell, 
Which Flora wakes in her spring tide hours ! 
My fair one comes across the dell, 
She comes to gather flowers. 
“ Twilight of morn ! from thy misty tower 
Scatter the trembling pearls around, 
Hang up thy gems on fruit and flower, 
Bespangle the dewy ground ! 
Phoebus, rest on thy ruby wheels — 
Look, and envy this world of ours ; 
For my fair one now descends the hills 
She comes to gather flowers. 
“ List ! for the breeze on wings serene 
Through the light foliage sails ; 
Hidden amidst the forest green 
Warble the nightingales ! 
Hailing the glorious birth of day 
With music’s best, divinest powers, 
Hither my fair one bends her way, 
She comes to gather flowers.” 
London Magazine, Spanish Romances. 
For the most part of our countrymen, I fear they do not allow themselves leisure to admire or enjoy 
the beauties of nature ; yet it cannot be said that they are utterly insensible to them ; for with regard to 
flowers at least, we may observe, that on Sundays every village beau, nay, every straggling townsman who 
comes on that day within reach of a flower, has one in his button hole. 
