THE PRIMROSE—GIRLHOOD. 
23 
leading—and finally deposited at her daily school, with as much regu¬ 
larity as the same sagacious quadruped would have displayed in carrying 
his master’s glove, or fetching a stick out of the water. How I should 
like to see a portrait of that fair, demure, elegant child, with her full, 
short frock, her frilled trousers, and her blue kid shoes, threading her 
way, by the aid of her sable attendant, through the many small impedi¬ 
ments of the crowded streets of Oxford. 
Miss Mitford. 
T71 AXREST of all that’s fair 
-J- In Nature’s works are ye, ye wilding flowers, 
When thus, at Spring’s first beck, ye blithely rear 
Your shining heads, to herald her bright hours. 
But that your bloom is brief, 
And here and there on some slight stem a thorn, 
Half hid, perchance, beneath a shrivelled leaf, 
Tells into what sad destiny ye’re born;— 
I could have thought the doom 
Which gave to ruin earth, to storms the sky, 
And man, God’s last best work, unto the tomb, 
Your primal beauty had unharmed passed by. 
But are ye loved the less 
That for our sakes these earth-born traits ye wear ? 
Oh, no, the very blight which mars your grace, 
And speaks your frailty, makes ye but more dear. 
Nor this your only claim 
On man’s regard; meekly from glade and bower 
Ye warn and counsel him, as ’twere your aim 
To win him back to Paradise once more. 
