s of the dead; the stately,
frozen calla, which seems a fit trophy, bound with laurel leaves, to lay
upon a soldier's bier; and the snow-cold camelia, whose stony
sculpturing is the very emblem for those white features whence God has
drained away the life.

But, camelias warmed with color, fuchsias, abutilons, the cultivated
azalia (the wild one has a scent), asters, and a host of other loved and
lovely flowers--why are they deprived of language?

Perhaps they _have_ a fragrance, felt by subtler senses than we mortals
own. But, at least, if they must now appear as mute, we may yet hope
that in a more spiritual existence we shall behold their very doubles,
gifted with a novel charm, a captivating perfume, we cannot conceive of
here. For in the vast harmony of the universe one cannot believe there
can be any floral instruments whose strings are never to be awakened.

It _has_ been but the pastime of a half hour that we have given to the
flower odors, when an ever-widening field for speculation lies before
us. But imagination droops exhausted, baffled by the innumerable
enchanting riddles still to solve. And this must now suffice.

If it serve to excite any dormant thought in the more ingenious mind of
another--if it be able to call out the learned conceits of some scholar,
or the delicate symbolisms of some dreamer, it has done its work.

The hand that has thus far guided the pen, to dally with a subject all
the dearer because so generally disregarded, will now gladly yield it to
the control of a fresher fancy, a truer observation.

LOCOMOTION.

The utilitarian spirit of the age is strikingly exhibited in the intense
desire to diminish the quantity of time necessary to pass from one spot
of the earth's surface to another, and to communicate almost
instantaneously with a remote distance. The great triumphs of genius,
within the last half century, have been accomplished within the domain
of commerce. And in contemplating the progress which has ensued, it is a
cause of humiliation that, as in the case of other great discoveries, so
many centuries have elapsed, during which the powers of steam, an
element almost constantly within the observation of man, were, although
perceived, unemployed. But reflection upon the nature of man, and his
slow advancement in the great path of fact and science, will at once
hush the expression of our wondering regret over the past, while a
nobler occupation for the mind offers its