I have already given one anecdote of a utilitarian; but I may as well give two more anecdotes of a similar character.  Mrs. Wordsworth was in a grove, listening to the cooing of the stock-doves, and associating their music with the remembrance of her husband’s verses to a stock-dove, when a farmer’s wife passing by exclaimed, “Oh, I do like stock-doves!” The woman won the heart of the poet’s wife at once; but she did not long retain it.  “Some people,” continued the speaker, “like ’em in a pie; for my part I think there’s nothing like ’em stewed in inions.”  This was a rustic utilitarian.  Here is an instance of a very different sort of utilitarianism—­the utilitarianism of men who lead a gay town life.  Sir W.H. listened, patiently for some time to a poetical-minded friend who was rapturously expatiating upon the delicious perfume of a bed of violets; “Oh yes,” said Sir W. at last, “its all very well, but for my part I very much prefer the smell of a flambeau at the theatre.”  But intellects far more capacious than that of Sir W.H. have exhibited the same indifference to the beautiful in nature.  Locke and Jeremy Bentham and even Sir Isaac Newton despised all poetry.  And yet God never meant man to be insensible to the beautiful or the poetical.  “Poetry, like truth,” says Ebenezer Elliot, “is a common flower:  God has sown it over the earth, like the daisies sprinkled with tears or glowing in the sun, even as he places the crocus and the March frosts together and beautifully mingles life and death.”  If the finer and more spiritual faculties of men were as well cultivated or exercised as are their colder and coarser faculties there would be fewer utilitarians.  But the highest part of our nature is too much neglected in all our systems of education.  Of the beauty and fragrance of flowers all earthly creatures except man are apparently meant to be unconscious.  The cattle tread down or masticate the fairest flowers without a single “compunctious visiting of nature.”  This excites no surprize.  It is no more than natural.  But it is truly painful and humiliating to see any human being as insensible as the beasts of the field to that poetry of the world which God seems to have addressed exclusively to the heart and soul of man.

In South Wales the custom of strewing all kinds of flowers over the graves of departed friends, is preserved to the present day.  Shakespeare, it appears, knew something of the customs of that part of his native country and puts the following flowery speech into the mouth of the young Prince, Arviragus, who was educated there.

                With fairest flowers,
    While summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele,
    I’ll sweeten thy sad grave.  Thou shalt not lack
    The flower that’s like thy face, pale Primrose, nor
    The azured Harebell, like thy veins; no, nor
    The leaf of Eglantine; whom not to slander,
    Out-sweetened not thy breath.

Cymbeline.