And the rough steps of vain, unlistening haste,
Yet the great ocean hath no tone of power
Mightier to reach the soul in thought's hushed hour
Than yours, ye lilies, chosen thus and graced.

FELICIA HEMANS.

8.- THE RHODORA :

ON BEING ASKED, WHENCE IS THE FLOWER?

IN May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook;
The purple petals, fallen in the pool,

Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why

This charm is wasted on the marsh and sky,
Dear, tell them that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for being:

Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask, I never knew;

But, in my simple ignorance, suppose

The self-same Power that brought me there brought you.

9. TO THE SMALL CELANDINE.

PANSIES, lilies, kingcups, daisies,
Let them live upon their praises;
Long as there's a sun that sets,
Primroses will have their glory;

EMERSON.

Long as there are violets,

They will have a place in story:

There's a flower that shall be mine,-
'Tis the little celandine.

Ere a leaf is on a bush,

In the time before the thrush
Has a thought about her nest,
Thou wilt come with half a call,
Spreading out thy glossy breast
Like a careless prodigal ;
Telling tales about the sun,
When we've little warmth, or none.

Ill befall the yellow flowers,
Children of the flaring hours!
Buttercups, that will be seen,
Whether we will see or no;
Others, too, of lofty mien:

They have done as worldlings do,-
Taken praise that should be thine,
Little, humble celandine!

WORDSWORTH.

YE field flowers! the gardens eclipse you, 't is true,
Yet, wildlings of nature, I dote upon you;

For ye waft me to summers of old,

When the earth teemed around me with fairy delight, And when daisies and buttercups gladdened my sight, Like treasures of silver and gold.

I love you for lulling me back into dreams

Of the blue Highland mountains and echoing streams, And of broken blades breathing their balm,

While the deer was seen glancing in sunshine remote, And the deep mellow crush of the wood-pigeon's note Made music that sweetened the calm.

Not a pastoral song has a pleasanter tune

Than ye speak to my heart, little wildlings of June: Of old ruinous castles ye tell,

Where I thought it delightful your beauties to find, When the magic of nature first breathed on my mind, And your blossoms were part of her spell.

Even now what affections the violet awakes;
What loved little islands, twice seen in their lakes,
Can the wild water-lily restore;

What landscapes I read in the primrose's looks,
And what pictures of pebbled and minnowy brooks
In the vetches1 that tangled their shore.

Earth's cultureless buds, to my heart ye were dear,
Ere the fever of passion or ague of fear

Had scathed my existence's bloom;

Once I welcome you more, in life's passionless stage,
With the visions of youth to revisit my age,
And I wish you to grow on my tomb.

1 vetch'es, leguminous plants.

CAMPBELL.

1. IN an obscure little Swedish village, at the beginning of the last century, was born a boy who was destined to

teach men more of the nature of plants than had been gathered by all the observers since the time when Solomon with curious eye noted the ways of the "hyssop on the wall." This was Karl Linné, the son of a poor Swedish clergyman. As Linné he was known by his boyhood comrades, but when he came to address the learned world through books he followed the custom of the old scholars and wrote his name, as he wrote his works, Latin-wise: so that it is as Linnæus that we speak of the illustrious Swede.

2. Linnæus seems to have been born a botanist, and according to his own declaration he was at once transferred from his cradle to a garden. His father had some knowledge of plants, and his uncle, who was his first teacher, had still more. In his diary he records that when he was four years old he went to a garden-party, with his father, and heard the guests discussing the names and properties of plants. He listened carefully to all he heard, and "from that time never ceased harassing his father about the name, quality, and nature of every plant he met with," so that his parent was sometimes quite put out of humor by his constant questioning.

3. The lad was taught in a small grammar-school, where he showed so little taste for books that his father would have apprenticed him to a shoemaker if a physician named Rothmann, who saw the boy's love of natural history, had not taken him into his own house and taught him botany and physiology. At one-and-twenty we find him, with an allowance of eight pounds a year from his father, a struggling student at the University of Upsala, putting folded paper into the soles of his old shoes to keep out the damp and cold, and trusting to chance for a meal. Nevertheless, he diligently persevered in attendance upon the