. But flowers
have a voice to all,--to old and young, to rich and poor, if they
would but listen, and try to interpret their meaning. "To me," says
Wordsworth,

The meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."

Have a flower in your room then, by all means! It will cost you only
a penny, if your ambition is moderate; and the gratification it will
give you will be beyond all price. If you can have a flower for your
window, so much the better. What can be more delicious than the
sun's light streaming through flowers--through the midst of crimson
fuchsias or scarlet geraniums? Then to look out into the light
through flowers--is not that poetry? And to break the force of the
sunbeams by the tender resistance of green leaves? If you can train
a nasturtium round the window, or some sweet-peas, then you have the
most beautiful frame you can invent for the picture without, whether
it be the busy crowd, or a distant landscape, or trees with their
lights and shades, or the changes of the passing clouds. Any one may
thus look through flowers for the price of an old song. And what a
pure taste and refinement does it not indicate on the part of the
cultivator!

A flower in your window sweetens the air, makes your room look
graceful, gives the sun's light a new charm, rejoices your eye, and
links you to nature and beauty. You really cannot be altogether
alone, if you have a sweet flower to look upon, and it is a
companion which will never utter a cross thing to anybody, but
always look beautiful and smiling. Do not despise it because it is
cheap, and everybody may have the luxury as well as you. Common
things are cheap, and common things are invariably the most
valuable. Could we only have a fresh air or sunshine by purchase,
what luxuries these would be; but they are free to all, and we think
not of their blessings.

There is, indeed, much in nature that we do not yet half enjoy,
because we shut our avenues of sensation and of feeling. We are
satisfied with the matter of fact, and look not for the spirit of
fact, which is above all. If we would open our minds to enjoyment,
we should find tranquil pleasures spread about us on every side. We
might live with the angels that visit us on every sunbeam, and sit
with the fairies who wait on every flower. We want some loving
knowledge to enable us truly to enjoy life, and we require to
cultivate a little more than we do the art of making the