Our Wild Flowers in their relations to

our Pastoral Life.

A LECTURE

READ TO THE

MECHANICS' INSTITUTE OF BERWICK-UPON-TWEED

IN THE SPRING OF 1851.

A Prelude of Mottoes.

"A merry time it is in May,

When springeth the summer's day,
And damisels carols leadeth,

On green wood fowls gredeth."-Romance of Merlin.

"Who sawe evir so feyr or so glad a day,

And how sote this seson is entring into May?

The thrustelis and the thrushis, in this glad mornyng,
The ruddok and the goldfynch; but the nyghtingale
His amerous notis lo how he twynith small!

Lo how the trees grenyth that nakid wer, and nothing
Bare this month afore but their sommer clothing!
Lo how Nature maketh for them everichone!
And as many as ther be he forgettith noone!
Lo how the seson of the yere and Averell showris
Doith the bushis burgyn out blossoms and flouris!
Lo the prymerosis how fresh they ben to sene!
And many othir flouris among the grassis grene.
Lo how they spryng, and sprede, and of divers hue!
Beholdith, and seith both rede, white and blue!
That lusty bin and comfortabill for mann'ys sight!

For I sey for myself it makith my hert to light."-CHAUCER.

"Pleasant are the words of the song," said Cuthullin! "lovely the tales of other times! They are like the calm dew of the morning on the hill of roes, when the sun is faint on its side, and the lake is settled and blue in the vale."-OSSIAN.

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"To him who in the love of nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away

Their sharpness, ere he is aware."-W. C. BRYANT.

"A Flow'r is not a flower alone

A thousand sanctities invest it;
And as they form a radiant zone,
Around its simple beauty thrown,
Their magic tints become its own,

As if their spirit had possess'd it."-WORDSWORTH.

Alas! I took great pains to study it, and 't is poetical."-Twelfth Night.

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By hieroglyphic hue and sign,

FLOWERS shall the heart and soul divine,

And all the feelings that engage

Man's restless thoughts from youth to age:
This blossom shall note Infancy,

Lifting in earliest spring its eye

To dewy dawn, and drinking thence
The purity of innocence;

That--vigorous Youth, which from the hue
Of summer skies imbibes its blue,
And bursts abroad, as if to say,

Can lusty strength like mine decay? ’
This-Life's autumnal date, which takes
A colouring from the breeze which shakes
The yellowing woods; and that-Old Age,
Which comes when Winter drifts the fields
With snow, and, prostrate to his rage

Tyrannical, bows down and yields."-D. M. MOIR.

"I thought of men, who look'd upon my face,
Breathing and blooming, breathless now and cold;
I heard their voices issuing from the mould,
Amid the scenes that bear of them no trace.
I thought of smiling children, who have sat

At evening on my knees, and press'd my hand,-
Their cherub features and their accents bland,-

Their innocence,-and their untimely fate ;

How soon their flower was cropt, and laid below

The turf, where daisies spring, and lilies blow!"-D. M. MOIR.

"O, these are Voices of the Past,

Links of a broken chain,

Wings that can bear me back to times

Which cannot come again;

Yet God forbid that I should lose

The echoes that remain!"-Household Words.

I NEED scarcely remind you that a very large portion of our knowledge and of our pleasures is derived from the impressions made on our senses by the objects with which we are surrounded. And of these objects none can be more influential than vegetable productions, because of their exceeding numbers and general diffusion. They cover the surface of the earth we tread upon; and send up from it a crowd of wholesome influences from which we cannot escape, and an unfailing stream with rich tribute to every sense. They load the air we breathe with sweet odours, and impregnate the exhilarated blood with their balsams and incense; they minister much music to the ear, the flower sighs in the zephyr, and the leaf rustles in the breeze, the trees murmur in the wind as doth the surging sea, and, in the storm, the woods utter their diapason in solemn or even in awful harmony*. To the eye, plants are the messengers ever of

*"Cuthulin sat by Tura's wall: by the tree of the rustling sound." OsSIAN. Mr. A. Hepburn writes, in a commentary on the Lecture with which he has favoured me:-" -"Every species of tree, whether in its summer or winter garb, gives forth a distinct sound when stirred by the breeze or the storm when wandering one sultry day in August 1851 near Tunbridge, Kent, the dancing leaves of a row of the noblest Aspen Poplars I ever beheld, gave forth a sound which carried my mind away to Belhaven bay in E. Lothian, and the rush of its gentlest tide; a corn-field in June gives forth a similar sound: pine woods-needle-wood of the Germans-give forth many soul-like sounds. I shall not soon forget the moan of the

glad tidings; and it hath, in no other province of nature, such prized and pleasant teachers. We are not wrong in referring to them much of our ideas of what is beautiful, for there are no forms more agreeable to our perception than those which imitate flowers in their shape and symmetry,—no combination of figures more graceful than those of the tracery and intertwinings of trees and creepers,and no colours more grateful than those which glow in their blossoms. The result of all these varied influences is well proved by the tincture which plants have communicated to our language. So full indeed is this with words and phrases that have a vegetable origin, that, in their use, we are scarcely conscious of the source they come from, or of their metaphorical sense. Take this example, selected, however, as much for the moral it conveys, as for its aptness :

“There is in every human heart

Some not completely barren part,

Where seeds of truth and love might grow,
And flowers of generous virtue blow:
To plant, to watch, to water there,
This be our duty, be our care."

And this one :—

"And he who gives his name to fate,
Must plant it early, reap it late;

Nor pluck the blossoms as they spring,
So beautiful, yet perishing."

And this other :

"You behold me here

A man bereaved, with something of a blight
Upon the early blossoms of his life

And its first verdure, having not the less

A living root, and drawing from the earth

Its vital juices, from the air its powers:

And surely as man's health and strength are whole
His appetites regerminate, his heart

Re-opens, and his objects and desires

Shoot up renew'd*.”

Another proof of this influence of plants is found in the fact that we have associated them so intimately with every stage and circumstance of man's life, that no other mode of portraying his mortal journey is more easily understood, or half so agreeable in its symbolical meanings. Death arrests the germ as soon as it has sprouted,

storm amidst the relics of the primeval forest in Glen Affrick, which I heard in 1847. Poets speak wisely in using the expression, 'strings of the forest lyre.'

*The two first examples are from Bowring; the third from Taylor's Philip Van Artevelde. I dare say the memory of most of my readers will furnish them with many illustrations even more apt.