a little child playing in a green meadow. Dry thy tears, O Malvina! - the hero died covered with his arms; and the flower of thy bosom has given a new flower to the hills of Cromla.

And the grief of Malvina was soothed by these songs, and she repeated the song of the new-born.

Since that day the daughters of Morven have consecrated the Daisy to infancy. It is, they say, the flower of innocence, the flower of the new-born.

HEART'S-EASE.

THINK OF ME.

THE Heart's-ease, Viola tricolor, or Pansy, from the French Pensée, is a beautiful variety of the Violet, differing from it in the diversity of its colours, the petals being chiefly yellow, variegated with black and purple. In fragrance, however, it is far inferior to the Violet. species of the Pansy is entirely purple.

And there are pansies, that's for thoughts.

One

SHAKSPEARE.

And thou, so rich in gentle names, appealing
To hearts that own our nature's common lot;
Thou, styled by sportive Fancy's better feeling
A Thought, the Heart's-Ease, and Forget-Me-Not.
BARTON.

The fanciful origin of the colour of this flower is thus described by our great bard:

I saw,

Flying between the cold moon and the earth,
Cupid all arm'd; a certain aim he took

At a fair vestal throned in the West,

And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow,
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts.
But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft
Quench'd in the chaste beams of the wat'ry moon:
And the imperial vot'ress passed on

In maiden meditation, fancy-free.

Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell:

It fell upon a little western flower,

Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound,

And maidens call it Love in Idleness.

The juice of it, on sleeping eyelids laid,
Will make or man or woman madly doat
Upon the next live creature that it sees.

SHAKSPEARE.

In the year 1815, this flower furnished occasion for a tragi-comic occurrence in France. A schoolmaster in a provincial town had proposed as a theme for his pupils a description of the Viola tricolor, and given them as a motto the following passage from a Latin poem by Father Rapin, entitled "The Gardens:"

Flosque Jovis varius, folii tricoloris, et ipsi
Par violæ.

The mayor of the town was informed of the circumstance; and, taking it into his head that the object of the schoolmaster was to excite insurrection against the government of the

F

lately-restored Louis XVIII., this sage functionary ordered the poor man to be apprehended. The mayor construed the verses above-quoted in the following manner:-Flos Jovis, the flower of Jupiter, was of course the flower of Napoleon; folii tricoloris denoted as evidently the threecoloured cockade; et ipsi par viola was a manifest allusion to le père la violette, as Bonaparte was then called, because his partisans had adopted this flower as a sign of their attachment, and carried it in their button-holes or in their bosoms. Astonished and confounded as the poor schoolmaster at first was at his arrest, he could not forbear smiling at this comic interpretation of the above passage by his worship, the mayor.

WALLFLOWER.

FIDELITY IN MISFORTUNE.

THE Wallflower derives its name from the circumstance of its growing upon old walls, and being seen on the casements or battlements of ancient castles, among the ruins of abbeys, and on turrets and cottages. Hence the minstrels and troubadours were accustomed to wear a bouquet of Wallflowers, as the emblem of an affection which is proof against time and misfortune.

Modern poets have not been backward to acknowledge the merits of this beautiful and fragrant flower.

To me it speaks of loveliness,
That passes not with youth,
Of beauty which decay can bless,
Of constancy and truth.

But, in adversity's dark hour,

When glory is gone by,