HUMILITY AND CONSTANCY 
291 
The feudal castle raised its grim and grated portcullis 
to receive them, and the iron archers threw down their 
tight-strung bows to welcome their approach. The)/ slept 
together in sheds where the hardy serf struggled against 
wrong, and lay many a night on the bleak hill-side, where 
the lonely shepherd tended his flock. They accompanied 
many brave hearts that went forth reluctantly to wage 
war against the invaders of their country; and as they 
conversed together, they beguiled the listless cheerlessness 
of the way. 
Wherever they went, old age coveted no other com- 
panionship; nor did they leave a grey head to sink down 
in sorrow to the grave. They gave to poverty content, 
to affliction resignation, and into the sad heart of pity 
they breathed hope. 
It was then that mankind began to find deep matter 
for meditation in the flowers ; that they no longer looked 
upon the blossoms as the mere harbingers of the seasons, 
and beautiful ornamenters of the fields, but discovered 
that they w'ere lettered over wdth the language of Love — 
that Beauty bloomed where no human eye perceived it, in 
sequestered nooks and untrodden wilds, and nature needed 
not the presence of man to either look upon or praise her 
works. 
They believed that hidden spirits dwelt among the 
flowers of the woods, and that not a Bell waved in the 
solitudes of the pathless dell but what had its own fair* 
minister ; for they were the first to discover that 
" There are more things in heaven and earth 
Than are dreamt of in our philosophy." 
That the “airy tongues which syllable men's names," 
sounding on lonely moors, and amid the silence of solemn 
forests, are invisible spirits, which linger about the earth, 
until the human heart becomes purified by Love — and 
fitting habitation for them to dwell in. 
The Descent of Spring was ever beautiful, from the first 
moment that she planted her white feet upon the daisied 
green of April, to when she stretched herself upon the 
couch of flowers, which had sprung up of their own accord 
that she might recline upon their sweetness. For her the 
