miles distance; nor do I at any time hear the groans without some emotion and pity, constrained, as I too often am, to fell them with much reluctancy. Mr. Downes in his Letters from the Continent says, "There is at this time a forest near Bolsena so highly venerated for its antiquity that none of the trees are ever cut."

One who, we are told, has since been honourably distinguished for metaphysical speculation, says in a juvenile letter to the late American Bishop Hobart, "I sometimes converse a considerable time with a tree that in my infancy invited me to play under its cool and refreshing shade; and the old dwelling in which I have spent the greater part of my life, though at present unoccupied and falling into ruin, raises within me such a musing train of ideas, that I know not whether it be pleasing or painful. Now whether it arise from an intimate association of ideas, or from some qualities in the insensible objects themselves to create an affection, I shall not pretend to de

VOL. V.

termine; but certain it is that the love we bear for objects incapable of making a return, seems always more disinterested, and frequently affords us more lasting happiness, than even that which we feel toward rational creatures.”

But never by any author, ancient or modern, in verse or prose, has the feeling which ascribes sentience as well as life to the vegetable world, been more deliciously described than by Walter Landor, when speaking of sweet scents, he says,

They bring me tales of youth, and tones of love;
And 'tis and ever was my wish and way

To let all flowers live freely and all die,

Whene'er their Genius bids their souls depart,
Among their kindred in their native place.
I never pluck the rose; the violet's head
Hath shaken with my breath upon its bank
And not reproach'd me; the ever sacred cup
Of the pure lily hath between my hands

Felt safe, unsoil'd, nor lost one grain of gold.

These verses are indeed worthy of their author when he is most worthy of himself. And yet Caroline Bowles's sweet lines will lose nothing by being read after them.

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.

How happily, how happily the flowers die away!
Oh! could we but return to earth as easily as they;
Just live a life of sunshine, of innocence and bloom,
Then drop without decrepitude or pain into the tomb.

The gay and glorious creatures! "they neither toil nor spin,"
Yet lo! what goodly raiment they're all apparelled in ;
No tears are on their beauty, but dewy gems more bright
Than ever brow of Eastern Queen endiademed with light.

The young rejoicing creatures! their pleasures never pall,
Nor lose in sweet contentment, because so free to all;
The dew, the shower, the sunshine; the balmy blessed air,
Spend nothing of their freshness, though all may freely share.

The happy careless creatures of time they take no heed;
Nor weary of his creeping, nor tremble at his speed;
Nor sigh with sick impatience, and wish the light away;
Nor when 'tis gone, cry dolefully, "Would God that it were day."

And when their lives are over, they drop away to rest,
Unconscious of the penal doom, on holy Nature's breast;
No pain have they in dying, no shrinking from decay.
Oh! could we but return to earth as easily as they !

Ce que j'en ay escrit, c'est pour une curiosité, qui plaira possible à aucuns : et non possible aux autres.

BRANTOME.

"CONSIDER," says Plutarch in that precious volume of Philemon Holland's translating, which was one of the elder Daniel's treasures, and which the Doctor valued accordingly as a relic, "consider whether our forefathers have not permitted excessive ceremonies and observations in these cases, even for an exercise and studious meditation of thankfulness; as namely, when they reverenced so highly the Oaks bearing

acorns as they did. Certes the Athenians had one Fig-tree which they honoured by the name of the holy and sacred Fig-Tree; and they expressly forbade to cut down the Mulberry-tree. For these ceremonies, I assure you, do not make men inclined to superstition as some think, but frame and train us to gratitude and sociable humanity one toward another, whenas we are thus reverently affected to such things as these that have no soul nor sense."

But Plu

tarch knew that there were certain Trees to which something more than sense or soul was attributed by his countrymen.

There was a tradition at Corinth which gave a different account of the death of Pentheus from that in the Metamorphoses, where it is said that he was beholding the rites of the Bacchanals, from an open eminence surrounded by the woods, when his mother espied him, and in her madness led on the frantic women by whom he was torn to pieces. But the tradition at Corinth was that he climbed a tree for the purpose of seeing their mysteries, and was discovered amid its branches; and that the