363 THE FLORIST. 
their implicit confidence in the narrator (in coarser English, “‘a corker”) 
I haye testimony at hand to confirm my statements, and Mr. Evans is 
here, like the statue of Horatius, ‘‘ to witness if I lie.’ He will 
readily recall his great astonishment, when I first began to speak to him 
of flowers; how he smiled encouragingly upon me as a mother: upon 
the baby just “‘ beginning to take notice” (‘‘ Bless it,” exclaims Mamma, 
‘it’s worth a million a minute!” and Nurse immediately follows with; 
“Yes, Mum, two!”); and how he would gaze upon me with an 
expression of kindly hope, as though he were some good physician, 
watching in his patient the first symptoms of recovery from delirious 
fever. He will recollect how rapidly our Rosarium spread, since, as 
the Poet of the Seasons sings— alsiy 
‘“* By swift degrees the love of Nature works, 
And warms the bosom, ti!l at last sublimed 
To rapture and enthusiastic heat,” 
until it finally invaded the kitchen-garden, and drove out the Asparagus 
at the point of the digging-fork; and he will rejoice with me in remem-. 
bering the time when our hostilities terminated; when Mars was to 
influence us no more, although that deity, according to Hesiod, was the 
son of a flower, and not of a gun, as one would be more disposed to 
imagine; when we turned our bayonets into pruning-knives, our 
swords into scythes, our mortars into garden-rollers, our helmets into. 
flower-pots, our uniforms into shreds for the wall-trees, and our trumpet. 
of war into a bird-tenter’s. horn. ae 
CHAPTER XII. oV1R ABOY. 
THe Presipent’s LecturE—concluded. 8, ea 
You have seen a well-bred: hunter ‘turned: out for» his summer’s*run;® 
when the soft showers of April have made the grasses green, and ere® 
the suns of May, opening the Buttercups, have converted-every pasture’ 
into a Field of the Cloth of Gold. For half-a dozen seconds, when ‘the? 
groom has quietly slipped over his nose the old ‘ exercising: bridle” 
which he knows so well, he stands gazing in amazement and perplexity, : 
astonied, as some rustic, who, having tormed his idea of cities from 
the occasional contemplation of a small market-town in the distance)” 
sees for the first time from some commanding height great ‘London 
spread out before him. Hardly, at first, can he (1am referring now to” 
the nobler animal of the two, the horse)—hardly at first can he réalise» 
his freedom; it seems to him too good to be true; but ‘suddenly ‘he® 
apprehends the happiness of his state, and with a wild: whinney of. 
delight he is away at speed, kicking as he goes, and: giving ample® 
demonstration to eye and ear that he thoroughly appreciates his new — 
liberty, and takes leave of the stable in a somewhat disrespectful way. 
By and bye he may condescend to a majestic trot, coming towards you 
with head erect, lithe, supple, elastic, “scarcely touching the ground, 
he ’s so proud and elate,” and exhibiting a dignity, and grace, and power, 
which you can see in no other animal, and only in him when thus un- 
usually excited. After awhile, perhaps, he may treat eye and nostril 
to a sight and scent of the young, tender herbage; but he is much too 
