PREFACE. 
“ The love of flowers seems a naturally 
implanted passion, without any alloy or de¬ 
basing object as a motive : the cottage has its 
pink,. its rose, its polyanthus ; the villa, its 
geranium, its dahlia, and its clematis: we 
cherish them in youth, we admire them in 
declining days : but, perhaps, it is the early 
flowers of spring that always bring with them 
the greatest degree of pleasure, and our 
affections seem immediately to expand at the 
sight of the first opening blossom under the 
sunny wall, or sheltered bank, however hum¬ 
ble its race may be. In the long and sombre 
months of winter our love of nature, like the 
buds of vegetation, seems closed and torpid ; 
but, like them, it unfolds and reanimates with 
the opening year, and we welcome our long- 
lost associates with a cordiality, that no other 
season can excite, as friends in a foreign 
clime. The violet of autumn is greeted with 
none of the love with which we hail the 
violet of spring; it is unseasonable, perhaps 
it brings with it rather a thought of melan¬ 
choly than of joy ; we view it with curiosity, 
not affection: and thus the late is not like the 
early rose. It is not intrinsic beauty or 
splendour that so charms us, for the fair 
maids of spring cannot compete with the 
a 
