"I've marred your blisses, Those sweete kisses That the young breeze so loved yesterdaye! Now ye're dying: How could I take your prettie lives away?” But you could not say this to dragon's-head and devil'sbit: "O dragon's-head, devil's-bit, bloodwort! say, How could I take your pretty lives away?" This would be like Dryden's version of the pig-squeaking in Chaucer : Poor swine! as if their pretty hearts would break.” The names of flowers in general among the polite are neither pretty in themselves, nor give us information. The country people are apt to do them more justice. Goldy-locks, ladies'-fingers, bright-eye, rose-a-rubie, shepherd's-clock, shepherd's-purse, sauce-alone, scarletrunners, sops-in-wine, sweet-william, &c., give us some ideas either useful or pleasant. But from the peasantry also come many uncongenial names, as bad as those of the botanists. Some of the latter are handsome as well as learned, have meanings easily found out by a little reading or scholarship, and are taking their place accordingly in popular nomenclatures; as amaranth, adonis, arbutus, asphodel, &c.: but many others are as ugly as they are far-fetched; such as colchicum, tagetes, yucca, ixia, mesembryanthemum; and as to the Adansonias, Browallias, Koempferias, John Tomkinsias, or whatever the personal names may be that are bestowed at the botanical font by their proud discoverers or godfathers, we have a respect for botanists and their pursuits, and wish them all sorts of "little, immortalities except these; unless they could unite them with something illustrative of the flower as well as themselves. A few, certainly, we should not like to displace; Browallia for one, which was given to a Peruvian flower by Linnæus, in honor of a friend of his of the name of Browall: but the name should have included some idea of the thing named. The Browallia is remarkable for its brilliancy. "We cannot," says Mr. Curtis, "do it justice by any colors we have.”* Now, why not have called it Browall's Beauty? or Browall's Inimitable? The other day we were admiring an enormously beautiful apple, and were told it was called "Kirk's Admirable,” after the gardener who raised it. We felt the propriety of this name directly. It was altogether to the purpose. There was use and beauty together, the name of the raiser, and the excellence of the fruit raised. It is a pity that all fruits and flowers, and animals too, except those with good names, could not be passed in review before somebody with a genius for christening, as the creatures did before Adam in Paradise, and so have new names given them worthy of their creation. Suppose flowers themselves were new. Suppose they had just come into the world, a sweet reward for some new goodness; and that we had not yet seen them quite developed; that they were in the act of growing; had just issued with their green stalks out *We learn this from the "Flora Domestica," an elegant and poetryloving book, specially intended for cultivators of flowers at home. of the ground, and engaged the attention of the curious. Imagine what we should feel when we saw the first lateral stem bearing off from the main one, or putting forth a leaf. How we should watch the leaf gradually unfolding its little graceful hand; then another, then another; then the main stalk rising, and producing more; then one of them giving indications of an astonishing novelty, a bud! then this mysterious, lovely bud gradually unfolding like the leaf, amazing us, enchanting us, almost alarming us with delight, as if we knew not what enchantment were to ensue; till at length, in all its fairy beauty, and odorous voluptuousness, and mysterious elaboration of tender and living sculpture, shone forth "The bright consummate flower!" Yet this phenomenon, to a mind of any thought and lovingness, is what may be said to take place every day; for the commonest objects are only wonders at which habit has made us cease to wonder, and the marvellousness of which we may renew at pleasure by taking thought. Last spring, walking near some cultivated grounds, and seeing a multitude of green stalks peeping forth, we amused ourselves with likening them to the plumes or other head-gear of fairies, and wondering what faces might ensue: and, from this exercise of the fancy, we fell to considering how true, and not merely fanciful, those speculations were; what a perpetual reproduction of the marvellous was carried on by Nature; how utterly ignorant we were of the causes of the least and most disesteemed of the commonest vegetables; and what a quantity of life and beauty and mystery and use and enjoyment was to be found in them, composed out of all sorts of elements, and shaped as if by the hands of fairies. What workmanship, with no apparent workman! What consummate elegance, though the result was to be nothing (as we call it) but a radish or an onion, and these were to be consumed, or thrown away by millions! A rough tree grows up, and at the tips of his rugged and dark fingers he puts forth-round, smooth, shining, and hanging delicately—the golden apple, or the cheek-like beauty of the peach. The other day, we were in a garden where Indian corn was growing; and some of the cobs were plucked to show us. First one leaf or sheath was picked off, then another, then another, then a fourth, and so on, as if a fruit-seller was unpacking fruit out of papers; and at last we came, inside, to the grains of the corn, packed up into cucumber-shapes of pale gold, and each of them pressed and flattened against each other, as if some human hand had been doing it in the caverns of the earth. BUT WHAT HAND! The same that made the poor yet rich hand (for is it not his workmanship also?) that is tracing these marvelling lines, and which if it does not tremble to write them, it is because Love sustains, and because the heart also is a flower which has a right to be tranquil in the garden of the All-wise. 67 A WORD ON EARLY RISING. S we are writing this article before breakfast, at an earlier hour than usual, we are inclined to become grand and intolerant on the strength of our virtue, and to look around us, and say, "Why is not everybody up? How can people lie in bed at an hour like this, the cool, the fragrant'?" "Falsely luxurious, will not man awake?" Thus exclaimed good-natured, enjoying Thomson, and lay in bed till twelve; after which he strolled into his garden at Richmond, and ate peaches off a tree, with his hands in his waistcoat - pockets! Browsing! A perfect specimen of a poetical elephant or rhinoceros ! Thomson, however, left an immortal book behind him, which excused his trespasses. What excuse shall mortality bring for hastening its end by lying in bed, and anticipating the grave? for, of all apparently innocent habits, lying in bed is perhaps the worst; while, on the other hand, amidst all the different habits through which people have attained to a long life, it is said that in this one respect, and this only, they have all agreed, no very long-lived man has been a late riser! Judge Holt is said to have been curious respecting longevity, and to have questioned every very old man that came before him, as to his modes of living; and |