8 
BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 
plants found growing spontaneously on the ruins of the 
Colosseum at Rome, there are no fewer than fifty-six 
grasses entered as flourishing in various parts of that 
venerable ruin; those fifty-six include examples of Aren - 
aria, Arena, Briza, Brornns, Festuca, Horcleum, Loliam, 
and Poa y besides that farmer's friend, Anthoxanthum 
odoratum , which is said, but erroneously, to be the sole 
source of the fragrance of the new-mown hay. This 
universality of grass is one of the most poetical of facts 
in the economy of the world. There is no place which 
it will not beautify. It climbs up the steep mountain 
passes which are inaccessible to man, and forms ledges 
of green amid the rivings of the crags: it leaps down 
between steep shelving precipices, and there fastens its 
slender roots in the dry crevices which the earthquakes 
had rent long ago, and into which the water trickles 
when the sunbeams strike the hoary snows above. There 
it shakes its plumes in the morning light, and flings its 
sweet, sweet laughing greenness to the sun; there it 
creeps and climbs about the mazes of solitude, and 
weaves its fairy tassels with the wind. It beautifies even 
that spot, and spreads over the sightless visage of death 
and darkness the serene beauty of a summer smile, fling¬ 
ing its green lustre on the bold granite, and perfuming 
the lips of morning as she stoops from heaven to kiss 
the green things of the earth. It makes a moist and 
yielding carpet over the whole earth, on which the im¬ 
petuous may pass with hurried tread, or the feet of beauty 
linger. Wherever it is seen it makes a velvet carpet of 
emerald beauty—a carpet on which the heavy heart may 
sometimes tread, but on which joy mostly wanders ; and 
