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with pleasure—I should say affection. The Gorse appears the emblem, indeed the portrait, of many a kindly being, whose rough and even repulsive exterior so overshadows their better and brighter parts, that the careless and superficial observer would declare "all barren:" while they who look beyond the surface, find qualities and beauties in the friend's mind and the flower's scent, that prove, though "all is not gold that glitters," the true treasure must often be sought in the hardest rock.
My reason for bringing my rough friend into such polished society as he here meets, was the wish to illustrate an old rustic proverb, which says, "When Gorse is out of blossom, kissing is out of season," very adroitly choosing the Gorse as the test, from its never being wholly destitute of blossoms.
The Anemone, "blushing with faint crimson," is another of our Spring Flowers invested with mythological fable. It first sprang, say the poets, from the blood of Adonis; and, in memory of its so imagined origin, Ben Jonson and many others name it Adonis-flower: in "Pan's Anniversary," he says—
Well done, my pretty ones—rain roses still,
Until the last be dropt, then hence, and fill
Your fragrant prickles for a second shower.
Bring corn-flags, tulips, and Adonis-flower.
Shakspeare, in his "Venus and Adonis," has the following beautiful passage descriptive of the Flower's birth:
