CHAPTERS ON FLOWERS CHAPTER I. THE SNOW-DROP. : BOTANY is doubtless a very delightful study; but a botanical treatise is one of the last things that I should be found engaged in. Truth shall be told my love of flowers-for each particular petal -is such, that no thirst after scientific knowledge could ever prevail with me to tear the beautiful objects in pieces. I love to see the bud bursting into maturity; I love to mark the deepening tints with which the beams of heaven paint the expanded flower; nay, with a melancholy sort of pleasure, I love to watch that progress towards decay, so endearingly bespeaking a fellowship in man's transient glory, which, even at its height, is but as "the flower of grass." I love to gaze upon these vegetable gems-to marvel and adore, that such relics of paradise are yet permitted to brighten a path where the iniquity of rebellious sinners has sown the thorn and the thistle, under the blighting curse of an offended God. Next after the blessed bible, a flower-garden is to me the most eloquent of books-a volume teeming with instruction, con solation, and reproof, But there is yet another, and somewhat fanciful view, that I delight to take of these fair things, my course has lain through a busy and a chequered path; I have been subjected to many changes of place, and have encountered a great variety of characters, who have passed before me like visions of the night, leaving but the remembrance of what they were. I have frequently in my lonely rambles among the flowers, assimilated one and another of them to those unforgotten individuals, until they became almost identified; and my garden bears a nomenclature which no eye but mine can decypher. Yet if the reader be pleased to accompany me into this parterre, I will exhibit a specimen or two of what I am tempted to call floral biography; humbly trusting that He who commended to our consideration the growth of the lilies, will be with us, to impart that blessing without which our walks, and words, and thoughts, must be alike unprofitably-sinfully vain. In glancing around the denuded garden, at this chilling season, we can scarsely fail to fix our regards upon the SNOW-DROP, which bows its trembling head beneath the blast. Every body loves the delicate snow-drop; I will not stop to repeat |