36 LANGUAGE AND 
DEAD LEAVES. 
MELANCHOLY. 
Ah me! a leaf with sighs can wring 
My lips asunder. 
E. B. Browning. 
Never did the florigraphist select from nature 
a more appropriate interpreter of man’s inner¬ 
most passions than when he chose dead leaves 
as representative of melancholy. Never did 
poet utter a more profound truth than he who 
said, 
“When we are sad, to sadness we apply 
Each plant, and flower, and Leaf that meets the eye.” 
There are few who have lived and loved who 
will accept Coleridge’s dictum, that “ in nature 
there is nothing melancholy.” It is impossible 
for those who have suffered—and who has not? 
—not to perceive evidences of sorrow, although 
ever counterbalanced by the sunny side in all 
portions of this mundane sphere. From the 
grief of man to the decay of the tiniest leaflet, 
every object in nature wears at times a melan¬ 
choly hue. It is impossible for the gayest of 
us not to feel occasionally the shadow—for us not 
to mourn for 
