THE DAISY OF THE DALE. 
85 
the first heavings of the awakening bosom of Spring. 
Majestic are the remains of onr old English forests, 
where around the battered and weather-beaten 
stems of the primitive oaks, the broad, fan-like 
leaves of the Fern spread; showing how sincerely 
they still adhere to the ancient soil which first 
nourished them, and that, amid the great revolutions 
of departed ages, they still stand there,—true, but 
lowly emblems of Sincerity,—marking out the spot 
where England’s mighty forests once spread. There 
it grew when the maned bison went thundering 
through the thick underwood, when the wolf made 
his lair at the foot of the primitive oak, and the 
tusked boar roamed free from the spear of the 
hunter. Ages before the son of Acadd came over 
the misty ocean and called our island the Country 
of Sea-cliffs, the fern grew broad and green as it 
does now. And in those solitudes, where human 
voice was then seldom heard, the tender and 
trembling Harebell grew, ever waving its delicate 
cups if the hushed wind but breathed in its sleep. 
Fitly was it named the Happiness of Betirement— 
the beauty of solitude—the graceful inhabitant of 
still and lonely places; for when a silence hung 
over the unexplored depths of our woodland fast¬ 
nesses, it was still there. 
It was one day, after a weary flight from a far-off 
foreign shore, that Love alighted with a sprig of 
