TRE VIOLET OF THE VALLEY 283 
Ages have passed away since that procession moved — 
the shadows of three thousand years have settled down 
over the hills and valleys where those beautiful maidens 
first gathered the flowers of summer — history has left no 
record of their existence^ — the language in which they 
breathed their loves, their hopes, and their fears, has 
died away — even their name as a nation is forgotten : and 
ail we know is that their men looked noble, and their 
women beautiful, and that flowers were used in their 
sacred ceremonies, and that all, excepting the mute figures 
upon the marble, have long since passed away. We sigh, 
and try in vain to decipher these ancient emblems. 
Love turned to the fables of the Heathen Poets, and 
there he found that those whose beauty the gods could 
not lift into immortality, they changed into flowers ; as if 
they considered that, next to the glory of being enthroned 
upon Olympus, was to be transformed into a beautiful 
and fragrant object — one that, while as the sun shone 
upon the world, and the globed dews hung their rounded 
silver upon the blossoms, so long should it stand through- 
out all time, 
“ A thing of beauty and a joy for ever/’ 
THE STORY OF THE VIOLET OF THE 
VALLEY. 
In one of those secluded valleys the beauty of which 
astonishes the traveller as he comes upon it unawares, 
stood a neat-looking, lowly-thatched cottage, like a hid- 
den nest, embosomed amid the green tranquillity of the 
hills. A winding footpath threaded its way towards the 
breezy summit — here running along the narrow level of 
a ledge, there making a graceful bend round the bole of 
some majestic tree, and farther on climbing upwards, with 
a steep, breathless ascent, until the level brow of the 
hill was gained. Then, far as the eye could wander, it 
commanded a view over, a vast outstretched landscape, 
diversified with spires, and plains, and woods, intercepted 
every way with a broad clear river, that went rolling and 
