ΤΟ THE POET WORDSWORTH, THESE ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE FLOWER-SEASONS ARE, BY HIS KIND PERMISSION, INSCRIBED BY LOUISA ANNE TWAMLEY. PREFACE. My own love for Flowers, and the intense pleasure they afford me, are my best as well as my true reasons for writing and publishing this volume; for I believed (and surely the feeling was pardonable, even if somewhat self-laudatory) that a record of the thoughts, fancies, and associations which combine to render Flowers and Flower Seasons so precious to me, might, if communicated, enhance the pleasure which others derive from the same sweet sources. I aim not at conveying scientific information; firstly, because the design of my work is purely poetical; and secondly, because my own knowledge of botany is too limited to allow of my offering any instruction to others. I love Flowers as forming one of the sweetest lines in the GOD-WRITTEN Poetry of Nature: as one of the universal blessings accessible to all nations, climes, and classes; blessings in their own loveliness alone, and in the pleasure ever derivable from the contemplation of loveliness; but trebly blessing us in the familiar and beautiful power they possess of awakening in our hearts feelings of wonder, admiration, gratitude, and devotion; teaching us to look from Earth to HIM who called it into existence, and to feel how worthy of our unceasing thankful adoration must be that Being, the meanest of whose creations is so wonderfully, so beautifully adapted to its appointed position in the vast whole. Flowers seem to form the easiest and pleasantest pathway to further love and knowledge of Nature's glories. They are indigenous to every soil, and familiar to every eye; a universal language of love, beauty, poetry, and wisdom, if we read them aright. But, in thus prefacing my present volume, I am, perhaps, wrong, as in the following pages I have sought only to express the beauty, poetry, and Romance of Nature which appear in the forms and characters of Flowers. I have called in the aid of fiction to vary the strain for the ears of those unaccustomed to songs of simple truth; and I have, in one or two instances, ventured a half-fable, the better to illustrate my meaning. Need I say that the Wild Flowers of mine own fair Land are dearer to me than any others? If it be requisite to tell this to my readers at the commencement of these sketches, they will certainly need no repe tion of the intelligence; for, on glancing over my illustrative drawings, I find portraits of thirty natives among the comparatively few subjects which a work like the present could include. Many far more magnificent might have been selected; but it is the poetry of our own meadows, and lanes, and dingles, and "little running brooks," that I wished to point out to my readers. Had I only made acquaintance with Flowers in the costly conservatory, or the trimly laid-out garden (though I dearly love a garden), I should not feel their beauty and blessings half so deeply as I now do. Wild Flowers seem the true philanthropists of their race. Their generous and cheerful faces ever give a kindly greeting to the troops of merry village children who revel in their blossomy wealth; and right welcome are they, gladdening the eyes of the poor town mechanic, when he breathes the fresh country air on Sunday, and gathers a handful of Cowslips, or Daffodils, or prouder Foxgloves, to carry home and set in the dim window of his pent-up dwelling. So dear and beautiful are Wild Flowers, that one would think every body must love them; to many persons, however, much of the delight they bring to me would seem out of place, extravagant-unintelligible; but I hope to conciliate even these dissenters from my creed, by the extracts I have introduced from our great old b pure, |