fragrance in a flower
formed no objection to it. Miss Martineau alludes to a newspaper report
that on one occasion the poet suddenly found himself capable of enjoying
the fragrance of a flower, and gave way to an emotion of tumultuous
rapture. But I have seen this contradicted. Miss Martineau herself has
generally no sense of smell, but we have her own testimony to the fact
that a brief enjoyment of the faculty once actually occurred to her. In
her case there was a simultaneous awakening of two dormant
faculties--the sense of smell and the sense of taste. Once and once only,
she enjoyed the scent of a bottle of Eau de Cologne and the taste of meat.
The two senses died away again almost in their birth.

Shelley calls Daisies "those pearled Arcturi of the earth"--"the
constellated flower that never sets."

The Father of English poets does high honor to this star of the meadow
in the "Prologue to the Legend of Goode Women."

He tells us that in the merry month of May he was wont to quit even his
beloved books to look upon the fresh morning daisy.

Of all the floures in the mede
Then love I most these floures white and red,
Such that men callen Daisies in our town,
To them I have so great affection.
As I sayd erst, when comen is the Maie,
That in my bedde there dawneth me no daie
That I nam up and walking in the mede
To see this floure agenst the Sunne sprede,
When it up riseth early by the morrow
That blisfull sight softeneth all my sorrow.

_Chaucer_.

The poet then goes on with his hearty laudation of this lilliputian
luminary of the fields, and hesitates not to describe it as "of all
floures the floure." The famous Scottish Peasant loved it just as truly,
and did it equal honor. Who that has once read, can ever forget his
harmonious and pathetic address to a mountain daisy on turning it up
with the plough? I must give the poem a place here, though it must be
familiar to every reader. But we can read it again and again, just as we
can look day after day with undiminished interest upon the flower that
it commemorates.

Mrs. Stowe (the American writer) observes that "the daisy with its wide
plaited ruff and yellow centre is not our (that is, an American's)
flower. The English flower is the

Wee, modest, crimson tipped flower

which Burns celebrated. It is what we (in America) raise in green-houses
and call the Mountain Daisy. Its effect, growing profusely about fie