LEGEND OP THE FLOWER-SPIRITS. 
109 
flower wave,—humble, but high over all,—the ever¬ 
lasting emblem of Fidelity throughout all change.” 
“Nor shall its influence end there,” said the 
superintending spirit, rising like a tall angel as 
she spoke, from amid her sister spirits of the 
flowers, “ I will give it a greater power: it shall 
stand up like a landmark between the past and the 
present ; it shall recall images of beauty which 
have faded away, and, throughout unnumbered 
ages, stand like a sage moralist, proclaiming to 
the children of men how fleeting is all earthly 
splendour ; it shall lift the mind to the contem¬ 
plation of an imperishable immortality, and raise 
the thoughts to another world, where Beauty decayeth 
not, and where the blushing cheek of Happiness is 
never touched by the pale finger of Sorrow. Where- 
ever the Woodbine is seen it shall denote Affection, 
—the devotedness of a fond heart, that clings unto 
what it loveth until it dies ; hut it shall not outlive 
the object to which it is wedded, for when once 
untwined from its affectionate embrace, it shall 
wither and pine, and die away, and he no more. 
Not so with the Wallflower : when all beside have 
perished and decayed, when the carved and vaulted 
roof has mouldered away, when the tall turret has 
fallen, stone by stone, and crumbled into dust, it 
shall still wave above the mound of buried ruins, 
like Beauty bending over, and silently contemplating 
