74 
LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. 
dued silver, branching across the yellow ground 
of deepest gold, or blended and lost amid the dark 
hues of the deepest purple. So would the thoughts 
wander over the one, light and cheerful as the 
floating silver of a summer cloud, or stumble over 
the jagged splendour of glittering precipices, like 
those piled heights which grow golden about the 
dizzy summits of sunset, when the western slope of 
heaven glows again with its burning range of up- 
coned mountains, till over all the dark-blue purple 
of the evening twilight gathers, and the shadows of 
night settle thicker upon each other, and all the 
land is dark. So might the unfettered thoughts, 
wandering over the face of the Pansy, picture the 
bright, and the golden, and the dark, which chequer 
the ever-changing countenance of heaven, as hopes, 
and joys, and fears, and sorrows, brighten and fade, 
and blacken over the brief April sunshine of our 
human existence. 
All the old legends which were known about the 
Pansy in ancient days are lost; excepting the one 
preserved by Shakspeare, and woven into his inimit¬ 
able “Midsummer’s Night’s Dream,” wherein he tells 
us how 
“The juice of it, on sleeping eyelids laid, 
Will make, or man or woman, madly dote 
Upon the next live creature that it sees.” 
And who that has once read this matchless pro- 
