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But Venus having lost the day,
Poore girles, she fell on you,
And beat ye so, as some dare say
Her blows did make ye blew.
Our divine Shakspeare, in his loftiest flights of thought and imagination, frequently pauses to cull the lowly Violet; and never does her soft hue and sweet perfume greet us in such power, and grace, and beauty, as when wrought into some spirit-stirring picture or mighty "fabric of a dream" among his wondrous works. How beautiful, in "Twelfth Night," is the comparison of soft music to the breath of wind upon the Violet!
That song again—it had a dying fall.
O! it came o'er my ear like the sweet south
That breathes upon a bank of Violets,
Stealing and giving odour.
The Violets from which the illustrative drawing was made, were the late-flowering variety, the leaves of which are somewhat larger than the wild Spring ones; those having bloomed and passed away while the author's hand was powerless, and her pencil idle, during illness.
The occupant of the following plate must be equally well known with its more gentle companions, for, as the almost unfailing inhabitant of wild moor, mountain, and waste land, the yellow Gorse is one of our familiar road-side acquaintances; and rough though it be, there is a kind cheeriness in its bright golden face, that makes us ever greet its seeming smile
