Oh! remembered for aye be that blessed isle,
All the day of our life until night;

And when evening glows with its beautiful smile,
And our eyes are closing in slumber the while,
May the "Greenwood" of soul be in sight.

NOTES FOR STUDY.

SURGE, a heavy, rolling mass of LUTE, an instrument of the guitar

water, a large wave.

SHEEN, brightness, radiance.
MAGIC AL, enchanted.

VES'PER, relating to evening, the
bell rung for evening worship.
TRIN'KETS, small ornaments.

class.

MI RAGE', a delusion, an appear

ance, as on a plain, so that the sky looks like a sheet of water. TURʼBU LENT, violent, confused, disturbed.

XXXI. THE LOVE OF FLOWERS.

HENRY WARD BEECHER.

Blessed be he who really loves flowers!—who loves them for their own sakes,-for their beauty, their associations, the joy they have given, and always will give; so that he would sit down among them as friends and companions, if there were no one else on earth to admire and praise them!

But such persons need no blessing of mine. They are blessed of God! Did he not make the

world for them? Are they not clearly the owners of the world and the richest of all mankind?

He who cannot appreciate floral beauty is to be pitied, like any other man who is born imperfect. It is a misfortune not unlike blindness. But men who contemptuously reject flowers as effeminate and unworthy of manhood reveal a positive coarse

ness.

Many persons lose all enjoyment of many flowers by indulging false associations. There are some who think that no weed can be of interest as a flower. But all flowers are weeds where they grow wildly and abundantly; and somewhere our rarest flowers are somebody's commonest.

Flowers growing in noisome places, in desolate corners, upon rubbish, or rank desolation, become disagreeable by association. Roadside flowers, ineradicable and hardy beyond all discouragement, lose themselves from our sense of delicacy and protection.

And generally there is a disposition to undervalue common flowers. There are few that will trouble themselves to examine minutely a blossom that they have often seen and neglected; and yet if they would but question such flowers and commune with them, they would often be surprised to find extreme beauty where it had long been overlooked.

If a plant is uncouth, it has no attractions to us simply because it has been brought from the ends of the earth and is a "great rarity." If it has beauty, it is none the less, but more attractive to us because it is common.

A very common flower adds generosity to beauty. It gives joy to the poor, the rude, and to the multitudes that could have no flowers, were Nature to charge a price for her blossoms. Is a cloud less beautiful, or a sea, or a mountain, because often seen, or seen by millions?

The buttercup is a flower of our childhood, and very brilliant in our eyes. Its strong color, seen afar off, often provoked its fate; for through the mowing lot we went after it, regardless of orchardgrass and herd-grass, plucking its long, slender stems, crowned with golden chalices, until the father, covetous of hay, shouted to us, "Out of that grass! Out of that grass, you rogue!"

It is a matter of gratitude that this finest gift of Providence is the most profusely and liberally bestowed. Flowers cannot be monopolized. The poor can have them as well as the rich; and, as they are messengers of affection, tokens of remembrance, and presents of beauty, of universal acceptance, it is pleasant to think that all men recognize a brief brotherhood in them.

It is not impertinent to offer flowers to a stranger.

The poorest child can proffer them to the richest. A hundred persons turned into a meadow full of flowers would be drawn together in a transient brotherhood.

It is affecting to see how serviceable flowers often are to the necessities of the poor. If they bring their little floral gift to you, it cannot but touch your heart to think that their grateful affection longed to express itself as much as yours.

You have books, or gems, or services that you can render as you will. The poor can give but little and can do but little. Were it not for flowers, they would be shut out from those exquisite pleasures which spring from such gifts. I never take one from a child, or from the poor, without thanking God, in their behalf, for flowers.

Then, too, if you cannot give a stone to mark the burial-place of your child, a rose may stand there; and from it you may, every spring, pluck a bud for your bosom, as the child was broken off from you.

And though it brings tears for the past, yet you will not see the flowers fade and come again, and fade and come again, year by year, and not learn a lesson of the resurrection, when that which perished here shall revive again, never more to droop or to die!