ng primrose calls for the further remark that
plants, not less than ourselves, have a trick of combining opposite
qualities,--a coarse-grained and scraggy habit, for instance, with
blossoms of exquisite fragrance and beauty. The most gorgeous flowers
sometimes exhale an abominable odor, and it is not unheard of that
inconspicuous or even downright homely sorts should be accounted
precious for their sweetness; while, as everybody knows, few members of
our native flora are more graceful in appearance than the very two whose
simple touch is poison. Could anything be more characteristic of human
nature than just such inconsistencies? Suavity and trickery, harshness
and integrity, a fiery temper and a gentle heart,--how often do we see
the good and the bad dwelling together! We would have ordered things
differently, I dare say, had they been left to us,--the good should have
been all good, and the bad all bad; and yet, if it be a grief to feel
that the holiest men have their failings, it ought perhaps to be a
consolation, rather than an additional sorrow, to perceive that the most
vicious are not without their virtues. Beyond which, shall we presume to
suggest that as poisons have their use, so moral evil, give it time
enough, may turn out to be not altogether a curse?

I have treated my subject too fancifully, I fear. Indeed, there comes
over me at this moment a sudden suspicion that my subject itself is
nothing but a fancy, or, worse yet, a profanation. If the flowers could
talk, who knows how earnestly they might deprecate all such misguided
attempts at doing them honor,--as if it were anything but a slander,
this imputation to them of the foibles, or even the self-styled good
qualities, of our poor humanity! What an egoist is man! I seem to hear
them saying; look where he will, at the world or at its Creator, he sees
nothing but the reflection of his own image.

IN PRAISE OF THE WEYMOUTH PINE.

"I seek in the motion of the forest, in the sound of the
pines, some accents of the eternal language."
SENANCOUR.

I could never think it surprising that the ancients worshiped trees;
that groves were believed to be the dwelling places of the gods; that
Xerxes delighted in the great plane-tree of Lydia; that he decked it
with golden ornaments and appointed for it a sentry, one of "the
immortal ten thousand." Feelings of this kind are natural; among natural
men