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tliemselves with her wealtli of lioney, we will fancy they are 
congratulating their noble and generous friend on her new 
honours. 
I am perhaps growing somewhat too excursive under the influ¬ 
ence of these sweet Spring memories ; and it may be thought, 
that in a work ostensibly devoted to flowers, I have no right to 
trespass upon the forest; but wherever I find such favoured 
children of Flora as the one last mentioned, be it in garden, 
glove, forest, or stream, I claim for them right of introduction 
among their fair and fragrant kindred. 
The flowers which have been selected in illustration of Spring 
now demand a brief notice, especially as several of them are of 
very classic origm, according to the poets, whose graceful 
imaginings will well relieve my matter-of-fact prose. 
It appears rather singular that the Snowdrop, which is con¬ 
sidered an indigenous plant, is never, to my knowledge, men¬ 
tioned by the old poets; this circumstance would seem to infer 
a comparatively recent inti'oduction of the lovely flower, and I 
have found it gi’owing ivild in several situations (such as the 
site of a moated house, long since destroyed, where it flourishes 
in profusion) where it may originally have been planted as a 
garden flower. Had it been equally abundant in Chaucer’s 
time, we may be tolerably sure so gentle and beautiful a thing, 
braving the bleakest season of the year, and excelling even the 
Daisy in lowly modesty, would not have remained unsung. 
Nor is it found either in the graceful chaplets of Shakspeare, 
the songs of Beaumont and Fletcher, or in the rich and many- 
K 
