d with it, as with rain. I cannot call it
colour,--it was conflagration. Purple, and crimson, and scarlet, like
the curtains of God's Tabernacle, the rejoicing trees sank into the
valley in showers of light, every separate leaf quivering with buoyant
and burning life; each, as it turned to reflect, or to transmit the
sunbeam, first a torch and then an emerald. Far up into the recesses
of the valley the green vistas arched like the hollows of mighty waves
of some crystalline sea, with the arbutus flowers dashed along their
banks for foam, and silver flakes of orange spray tossed into the air
around them, breaking over the grey walls of rock into a thousand
separate stars, fading and kindling alternately as the weak wind
lifted and let them fall. Every glade of grass burned like the golden
floor of heaven, opening in sudden gleams as the foliage broke, and
closed above it, as sheet-lightning opens in a cloud at sunset; the
motionless masses of dark rock, dark though flushed with scarlet
lichen, casting their quiet shadows across its restless radiance, the
fountain underneath them filling its marble hollow with blue mist and
fitful sound; and, over all, the multitudinous bars of amber and
rose--the sacred clouds that have no darkness, and only exist to
illumine--were seen in fathomless intervals between the solemn and
orbed repose of the stone pines, passing to lose themselves in the
last, white, blinding lustre of the measureless line where the
Campagna melted into the blaze of the sea.

50. Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity:
children love them; quiet, contented, ordinary people love them as
they grow; luxurious and disorderly people rejoice in them gathered;
they are the cottager's treasure; and in the crowded town, mark, as
with a little broken fragment of rainbow, the windows of the workers
in whose hearts rests the covenant of peace.

51. Yet few people really care about flowers. Many, indeed, are fond
of finding a new shape of blossom, caring for it as a child cares
about a kaleidoscope. Many, also, like a fair service of flowers in
the greenhouse, as a fair service of plate on the table. Many are
scientifically interested in them, though even these in the
nomenclature, rather than the flowers; and a few enjoy their
gardens.... But, the blossoming time of the year being principally
spring, I perceive it to be the mind of most people, during that
period, to stay in towns. A year or two ag