178 ■WILD FLOWERS. 
should he not have flo-w^ers at all his meals, 
seeing that they were growing all day ? Now 
here is a fashion that shall last you for ever, if 
you please ; never changing with silks, and 
velvets, nor dependent upon the caprice of some 
fine gentleman or lady. The fashion of the 
garments of heaven and earth endures for¬ 
ever, and you may adorn your table with spe¬ 
cimens of their drapery,—with flowers out of the 
fields, and golden beams out of the blue ether.” 
Shall we not away, then, reader, to gather 
the wild beauties, of nature, which are so 
lavishly scattered abroad for us, and adorn our 
homes with that drapery of the earth and the 
heavens ? 
For as Miss Pardoe exclaims :—^^Is not the 
holiness of nature a loftier contemplation than 
the gilded saloons of the g'reat ? The power 
to feel and to appropriate the noble gifts of the 
Creator, eminently more glorious, than the 
talent to discover the finite perfections of the 
creature ? Is not the breeze w'^hich sweeps 
over the heathy hill, or through the blossom- 
