THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS.

"Flowers are the alphabet of angels, whereby they write on the hills and fields mysterious truths."- FRANKLIN.

THE fair lily is an image of holy innocence; the purple rose a figure of unfelt love; faith is represented to us in the blue passion flower; hope beams forth from the evergreen; peace from the olive branch; immortality from immortelle; the cares of life are represented by the rosemary; the victory of the spirit by the palm; modesty by the blue, fragrant violet; compassion by the ivy; tenderness by the myrtle; affectionate reminiscence by the forget-me-not; natural honesty and fidelity by the oak leaf; unassumingness by the corn flower; and the auricula, "how friendly they look upon us with their childlike eyes." Even the dispositions of the human soul are expressed by flowers. Thus silent grief is portrayed by the weeping willow; sadness by the angelica; shuddering by the aspen; melancholy by the cypress ; desire of meeting again by the starwort; the night rocket is a figure of life, as it stands on the frontiers between light and darkness. Thus Nature, by these flowers, seems to betoken her loving sympathy with us; and whom hath she not often more consoled than heartless and voiceless men are able to do?

THE USE OF FLOWERS.

GOD might have made the earth bring forth
Enough for great and small,
The oak tree and the cedar tree,
Without a flower at all.

He might have made enough, enough
For every want of ours —
For luxury, medicine, and toil,
And yet have made no flowers.

Then, wherefore, wherefore were they made,
All dyed with rainbow light,
All fashioned with supremest grace,
Upspringing day and night,-

Springing in valleys green and low,
And on the mountain high,
And in the silent wilderness,
Where no man passes by?

Our outward life requires them not:
Then wherefore had they birth?
To minister delight to man,

To beautify the earth,

To comfort man, to whisper hope
Whene'er his faith is dim;

For whoso careth for the flowers
Will also care for him.

THE BRIGHT, BRIGHT FLOWERS.

THEY tell of a season when men were not,

When earth was by angels trod,

And leaves and flowers in every spot

Burst forth at the call of God;

When spirits, singing their hymns at even,

Wandered by wood and glade,

And the Lord looked down from the highest heaven, And blessed what he had made

The bright, bright flowers!

That blessing remaineth upon them still,
Though often the storm cloud lowers,
And frequent tempests may soil and chill
The gayest of all earth's flowers.
When Sin and Death, with their sister, Grief,
Made a home in the hearts of men,

The blessing of God on each tender leaf

Preserved in their beauty then

The bright, bright flowers!

The lily is lovely as when it slept

On the waters of Eden's lake;

The woodbine breathes sweetly as when it crept
In Eden from brake to brake.

They were left as the proof of the loveliness
Of Adam and Eve's first home;

They are here as a type of the joys that bless

The just in the world to come

The bright, bright flowers!

THE LITTLE MOSS ROSE.

A FAIRY once gave me a sweet little gem,
On a bright sunny day, long ago;
And as she let go of its delicate stem,
She called me her dear little beau.

The look she then gave me I ne'er can forget,
While the current of life ebbs and flows;
And the sweet little gem I remember it yet -
'Twas a beautiful little Moss Rose.

Such little endearments, how strangely they twine
Round the heart as a garland of love,
Giving peace to the soul, like a halo divine
Coming down from the regions above.

Of all the sweet flowers of the garden or glen,
Where the breeze of the south softly blows,

Ever plucked by the sons or the daughters of men,
O, give me the pretty Moss Rose !

THE END.