Page:The Romance of Nature; or, The Flower-Seasons Illustrated.djvu/256

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

158

of the sentimental renown attached to it. The story is this—Two German Lovers were walking by a river (the Rhine, I believe), when the Lady seeing and wishing for a flower of the Myosotis Palustris, the Cavalier attempted to gather it for her, and in so doing slipped, and was drowned, exclaiming, as he sunk—"Vergils mich nicht!"—


My next group is formed of natives and foreigners, namely three African and two wild British Heaths: the former splendid in colours and magnitude, and the latter dear in their luxuriant and wild simplicity. Though bonny Scotland claims the Heather as her own especial emblem, and her moorlands and mountains are richly and gaily clad with its verdure and bloom, yet England and Wales are alike enlivened by its merry bells along many a tract of country otherwise bare and barren.

I shall not ask Jean Jacques Rousseau
If birds confabulate or no;
'Tis clear that they were always able
To hold discourse, at least in fable;
And e'en the child, who knows no better
Than to interpret by the letter
A story of a cock and bull,
Must have a most uncommon skull.


In like manner do I think it unnecessary to appeal either to philosophical authority or poetic licence for my frequent floral conversazioni, such as the 'Feuds among the Heather,' and the like, seeing we may quite as readily find sermons