And strange as it appears, how often do we see persons, who would blush were they seen contemplating the simple beauties of a delicate flower, pride themselves in embellishing their dwellings and equipage with its coarsely wrought picture.  But while they are pleasing themselves with the shadow, we will feast ourselves on the substance.

“I am weary of this lecture upon flowers,” the stoical reader exclaims:  If so, my friend, you are at liberty to retire to any place of entertainment which your better judgment may suggest; but I will lay aside my pen to walk among the flowers; and see if some of those silent, though eloquent preachers, will not furnish the mind with some new idea, which may serve as a foundation for another discourse.

MUSIC OF THE MIND.

What is music of the mind?  Is it the soft harmonious strains of the little minstrel which often steals into some secret nook within the heart, and there tunes her silent harp to notes of sweetest melody?  Though we never hear her melting lays, yet persons in every station, from the king upon his throne to the beggar by the wayside, and the rude untutored savage roaming through his native forest, often experience that exquisite pleasure produced by her magic spell.

We are continually surrounded by scenes calculated to produce this music.  The variegated scenery of different landscapes; the changing seasons of the year; Spring with her balmy air, soft refreshing showers, green fields, fragrant flowers, and merry cheerful birds; Summer, with her sultry days, her cool inviting shades, her waving fields, and delicious fruits; and Autumn, with his rich golden harvest, bright pensive dreamy days, and clear moonlight evenings, have power to rouse the minstrel from her slumbers; and even rude old Winter, clothed in clouds and storms and drifting snows, can with his icy fingers sweep her silent harp strings and wake their wildest melody.

We retire beneath the sacred shade of some ancient forest, and look upon nature as she stands forth arrayed in all the charms of her primeval beauty; where art has never plucked her native bloom, and tinged her cheek with carmine.  We there gaze upon the tall old trees, which have for centuries been towering higher and higher, till they seem ambitious to wave their lofty tops among the very clouds of heaven.  We quench our thirst with the sparkling waters of the pure spring, which bubbles up cool and clear from its crystal fountain, washing the roots of the trees, and trickling over the ground in bright streams, like threads of molten silver, till they unite in one of those beautiful streamlets which lend such enchantment to the woodland bowers; here, murmuring melodiously among smooth rocks and bright pebbles, while the dimpling eddies upon its surface reflect the rays of laughing sunshine which quiver through the leafy canopy above; there, dashing over a projecting rock forming a little