THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
380 
her his hand, wretched and forlorn as she was, and she 
became his wife. 
Strange and unlooked-for circumstances occur in our lives, 
or the lives of those around us, which are utterly unaccount¬ 
able, except viewed by the eye of faith. The overruling 
Providence of God can alone explain the mysterious and 
wonderful shiftings of the great tragedy of life. Romantic 
and imaginative as the writings of some men are, the doings 
of the Lord are more striking and wondrous still. 
Matilda had been in the deepest abyss of poverty and 
abasement; she had written imploring letters to all the 
gentlemen she had known in better days, depicting her 
destitution, and beseeching a trifle to save her from starva¬ 
tion. Some had responded liberally, pitying her condition ; 
others paused, knowing more of her history; but still her 
condition was wretched, and there seemed no door of escape 
that could possibly open before her. 
There is nothing too hard for the Lord. Let us remember 
this, not to encourage ourselves in our wickedness. Matilda's 
history will forbid us plainly to do that; but to prove that 
He is mightier than we are—mightier than Satan—“mightier 
than the voice of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves 
of the sea.” Let man’s condition be ever so hopeless—ever 
so low—ever so terriblelet sorrow, affliction, poverty, 
peril, the world, Satan, sin, persecutions, disaster, all rage 
against us—yea, lot death threaten us : the Lord is mightier 
still! He “ sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the 
inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers.” Oh ! if His pro¬ 
vidence is so manifestly displayed, and His tender pity so 
sweetly shown forth to the rebellious and the vilest, let 
those who know Him, love and trust Him more ; and let all 
who hear the sound thereof, turn to Him and live! 
(To be continued.) 
FLOWERS, AND “SUNNY MEMORIES." 
Thebe are few subjects on which the gifted mind of the 
Author of “ Uncle Tom’s Cabin” shines forth more beau¬ 
tifully, or for which she evinces a tenderer and more ex¬ 
quisite sensibility, than for flowers. On looking forth from 
the bed-room window of the house to which she had been 
taken after landing in this country, her eye rested on the 
ivy clad porch, with shrubs of prickly holly, and a robin 
perched on the topmost spray of one of them—“Ah!" she 
rejoicingly exclaimed, “ this is really England.” In her 
walk through the pleasure-grounds of the mansion after 
breakfast, the Daisies, Primroses, Bluebells, and the yellow 
blossoms of the Furze, highly delighted her ; she commented 
upon each, remarking that none of them graced the land¬ 
scape of New England. 
The straggling hedgerows with their many-tinted banks, 
and the ditches on the roadsides in which the wild-flowers 
nestled, were contrasted with their own stone-walls. “ I 
remember reading,” she observes, “in stories, about children 
trying to crawl through a gap in the hedge to get at flowers, 
and tumbling into a ditch on the other side, and now I 
saw exactly how they could do it.” 
Travelling myself one day with an American gentleman 
and his lady in this country, he remarked to me, “ There is 
nothing with which I am so much delighted in England as 
with the majestic and graceful outline of your trees,—your 
hedgrow enclosures—your snug farm-houses—your gentle¬ 
men’s seats, and antique churches." And on my telling him 
that the steeple or belfry ends of the latter all pointed to 
the west, he was astonished, anxiously enquired the reason, 
and kept a sharp look out for every one which we subse¬ 
quently passed. 
But to return to our author, had she not been caught up 
by the whirlwind of fashion and opulence, we might have 
had many sketches from her pen on the subject of our 
English flora; as it was, in Scotland, that land of sight-seeing 
and hospitality, the rich and varied foliage of its romantic 
glens, the park-like scenes, the Yew, the Heather, and, above 
all, the deep green, and velvety texture of the grass-lawns, 
and the exotics in the conservatories of the nobility, all 
enchanted her. “So far as I have observed,” she continues, 
“ the culture of flowers, both in England and Scotland, is 
more universally an object of attention than with us. Every 
family in easy circumstances seems, as a matter of course, 
February 13. 
to have their greenhouse, and the flowers are brought to a 
degree of perfection which I have never seen at home.” 
Flowers may justly be deomed the enchantresses of the 
soul, for they awaken delight with their inexplicable ex¬ 
cellencies, without our being able to define the hidden 
sources from whence the pleasure springs. Ladies enjoy 
flowers best, for they have a 6ort of poetical appreciation of 
their beauties; while gentlemen have only a prosaic one. 
Doctor Johnson considered a snuff-box to be the best pass¬ 
port to a Scotchman’s heart—but flowers are a more 
universal key to confidence and conversation. Mungo Park, 
during his almost death-struggle in the African desert, was 
excited to one more effort by the sight of a little green 
moss ; his confidence renewed itself in the Being who could 
thus foster so diminutive an object in such a place. 
My neighbour, with his well-kept grounds, whose mind 
usually dwells on more serious and nobler objects, recreates 
himself by cultivating the Primula tribe of plants; of which 
he has a choice variety around his pond, in his dell, and 
along the margin of his shrubbery walks. His wife, with 
perhaps more taste, is fond of pet flowers, raising of new 
ones from seed, and occasionally blossoms out herself in the 
form of an interesting article for some gardening Magazine. 
Flowers delight and instruct us, and commend themselves 
by their cheering influence to all minds. God is no 
Utilitarian; He adorns what He creates, and dispenses 
beauty with a liberal hand. 
In one sunny spot, amid the snow on Mont St. Barnard, 
our author gathered eighteen different kinds of flowers; 
showing bow these children of nature make their resting- 
places bright for the homage of the traveller’s heart. The 
clefts, valleys, and lower parts of the Alps were enammelled 
with flowers. “ I know not ” she says, “ why the old build¬ 
ings and walls in Europe have this vivacious habit of 
shooting out little flowery ejaculations and soliloquies at 
every turn. One sees it along through France and Switzer¬ 
land, everywhere; but never, that I can remember, in 
America." A fact which owes its solution to our moister 
climate. “ These flowers seem to me to be earth’s raptures 
and aspirations; her better moments, her lucid intervals. 
Like everything else in our existence, they are mysterious. 
In what mood of mind were they conceived by the Great 
Artist? Of what feelings of his are they the expression, 
springing up out of these gigantic, waste, and desolate 
regions, where one would think that the sense of bis Al- 
mightiness might overpower the soul! Born in the track of 
the glacier and the avalanche, they seem to say to us, that 
this Almighty Being is very pitiful, and of tender com¬ 
passion ; that in Him there is an exquisite tenderness and 
love of the beautiful; and that if we would bo blessed, His 
will to bless is infinite. The greatest men have always 
thought much of flowers. Luther kept a flower in a glass 
on his writing table; and when he was waging his great 
public controversy with Ecliius, he held a flower in his 
hand. Lord Bacon has a beautiful passage about flowers. 
As to Shakspere, he is a perfect garden; he is full of 
flowers; they spring and blossom, and wave in every cleft of 
his mind.” 
On returning through France, she remarked, “The life 
of Paris, indeed of the continent, is floral, to an extent to 
which the people of the United States can form no con¬ 
ception. Flow r ers are a part of all their lives. The churches 
are dressed with flowers, and on fete days are fragrant with 
them. A jardiniere forms a part of the furniture of every 
parlour ; a jardiniere is a receptable made in various fanciful 
forms for holding pots of flowers. These pots are bought 
at the daily flower-market for a trifle, in full bloom and high 
condition; they are placed in the jardinifere, the spaces 
around them being filled with sand and covered with moss. 
Again, there are little hanging baskets suspended from the 
ceilings and filled with flowers. These things give a fanciful 
and festive air to apartments.” 
“ Poetry, like truth ” says Ebenezer Elliott, “ is a common 
flower; God has sown it over the earth like daisies sprinkled 
with tears, or glowing in the sun, even as He places the 
crocus and the March frosts together, and beautifully 
mingles life and death : ’’— 
Your voiceless lips, O flowers, are living preachers,— 
Each cup a pulpit, and each leaf a book, 
Supplying to my fancy numerous teachers 
From loneliest nook. 
