Wuo does not remember the description of Corisnnde's garden, where there were huge bushes of honey-suckle nnd bowers of sweet pen and sweet briar and jes. somme, and gilliflowers scenting the air with their aweer breath; and where there were banks of violets, which the southern breeze always stirred, and miguounette filling every nov. It seemed a blue of roses and carnations though one recognized in n moment the presence of the lily, the heliotrope, and Of those dainty vignettes which open tales in the Decameron, and recalls memories of old and the and in them, The melodious Vicar of Dean Prior would have revelled 1 the sweet disorder that yo doubt prevailed Where, in Uke Mowers banging over the narrow paths, the prituroses that he called sweet babes, and the violets that be sang of as Muids of Honour that bring in the Spring; who found a conceit which accounted for every 4 colour and virtue in his ome excellence of his platonic Bat modern gardening finds its in massing together beds of colours, in producing new by which the simple graces of nature are sacrificed to the artifices of science. 'I'he scents there are not lusty effeminated products of the hothouse have taken the plnoe of the sweet smell ling, natural flowers, of which our fore. fathers made nosegays. The old order oliangeth, yielding place to the new, in flowers as in everything else, It is an old story. "Ihave heard it said," Per. dita ana were, 8 an art which in their"—the flowers—" piedness shares, with great creating nature." "You see, sweet Polixenes re; "we marry gentler scion to the wildest stock, and make conceive a bark of baser kind, by bud of nobler rice: sis an art that doth mend nature." Pordi acknowledges the virtues of the art, but will have nothing to do with its resalis—"T'll not put " dibble in the earth to set one slip of them," and goes on extolling her simple, natural flowers—
Daffodils, that come before the swallow res, and take The winds of Match with beauty; violets, dim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, Or Cytherea'e breath; pale primrose Taat die unmarried lilies of all kinds, The flower-de-luce being one—At the Flower Show to-day it will be "roses, roses, all the way;" and the same in our gardens for some time to come. The flower which the old Greek myth of the amours of Venus made the symbol of secrecy and silence, and which strangely enough was once placed on confessional to indicate that what was spoken there was under tke rose; that has been oung in the sacred and profane poetry of every language, from the Cunticles to Tennyson, has whole literature to itself. The legends of how the red case obtained its colour are innumerable; now it is from the fire which consumed a martyr virgin at Bethlehem, now from Cupid overturns ing a cup of wine, and again it blood of Adonis or Venue, is {Queen of flowers wns the badge of jthe houses of York and Lancaster after Suffolk had plucked a red rose with young Somerset, and Vernon the pale and maiden blossom" in the Lem. ple Gardens, The Juoobites adopted it Jan the emblem of the King over the Water, thereby curiously associating a flower that bad been sung the world over og the glory of the maru with a sun that bad set forever, It la a flower that loves the sunshine of summer, though there are roses of other seasons, Our wise ancestors liked not the autumn rose, and there was a common saying amongst them that "when rose and jets flourish in autumn, it is an evil sign of coming pestilence," In warm, moist, weather at this time of the year we may renlizo this picture of place and Gowers, when— sultices to upturn to Half germinating spices, More decay produces richer life, and, day by day, New pollen on the lily potal blows. One 1 more labyrinthine, buds the OF the kindred of the lily we shall have the Foxglove, which shares with the Campaunta the name of Gaunt do Noire Dame, and there too will be the Larkapur, who whispered "I hear T hear," when che played Sister Ann to hor friend the lily, that night when the Auwors waited in the High Hall gardou—"Till a silence came with the waking ird, And a lish with the setting moon." Besides these flow ore, there will be the gaudy and fragrant Goraniums, They have no associations with Christian faith or with love, or indeed with anything more human than having sprang into existenoeby Mahomed' shirt, when placed on a Mallow bush to dry, having trans. formed the Mallow into a magnificent geranium, There are ea many vari ties of flowers now a days that we may be excused the ignorance of not knowing whether the Heliotrope, which, with other sweet smelling flowers, will make the tent as though all the spices of the j Bust, are circumfused there," is the Marigold.
"The Sunflower who tutus on her god when he sets The same look which she turned when he rose," or a modern exquisite under th id name, It ie a natural barometer, i our old friend; and the languors of its scent have associated it in some fanal with the placid pleseures of wedded
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.