I never behold elsewhere any of the specimens of the several varieties of flowers which the afflicted parent consigned to the hallowed little coffin without recalling to memory the sainted child taking her last rest on earth.  The mother was a woman of taste and sensibility, of high mind and gentle heart, with the liveliest sense of the loveliness of all lovely things; and it is hardly necessary to remind the reader how much refinement such as hers may sometimes alleviate the severity of sorrow.

Byron tells us that the stars are

      A beauty and a mystery, and create
      In us such love and reverence from afar
  That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star.

But might we not with equal justice say that every thing excellent and beautiful and precious has named itself a flower?

If stars teach as well as shine—­so do flowers.  In “still small accents” they charm “the nice and delicate ear of thought” and sweetly whisper that “the hand that made them is divine.”

The stars are the poetry of heaven—­the clouds are the poetry of the middle sky—­the flowers are the poetry of the earth.  The last is the loveliest to the eye and the nearest to the heart.  It is incomparably the sweetest external poetry that Nature provides for man.  Its attractions are the most popular; its language is the most intelligible.  It is of all others the best adapted to every variety and degree of mind.  It is the most endearing, the most familiar, the most homefelt, and congenial.  The stars are for the meditation of poets and philosophers; but flowers are not exclusively for the gifted or the scientific; they are the property of all.  They address themselves to our common nature.  They are equally the delight of the innocent little prattler and the thoughtful sage.  Even the rude unlettered rustic betrays some feeling for the beautiful in the presence of the lovely little community of the field and garden.  He has no sympathy for the stars:  they are too mystical and remote.  But the flowers as they blush and smile beneath his eye may stir the often deeply hidden lovingness and gentleness of his nature.  They have a social and domestic aspect to which no one with a human heart can be quite indifferent.  Few can doat upon the distant flowers of the sky as many of us doat upon the flowers at our feet.  The stars are wholly independent of man:  not so the sweet children of Flora.  We tend upon and cherish them with a parental pride.  They seem especially meant for man and man for them.  They often need his kindest nursing.  We place them with guardian hand in the brightest light and the most wholesome air.  We quench with liquid life their sun-raised thirst, or shelter them from the wintry blast, or prepare and enrich their nutritious beds.  As they pine or prosper they agitate us with tender anxieties, or thrill us with exultation and delight.  In the little plot of ground that fronts an English cottage the flowers are like members of the household.  They are of the same family.  They are almost as lovely as the children that play with them—­though their happy human associates may be amongst