f pinks, and hot glowing peonies;
poppies run to seed; the sugared lily, and faint mignonette, all ranged
in order, and as thick as they can grow; the box-tree borders, the
gravel-walks, the painted alcove, the confectionery, the clotted
cream:--I think I see them now with sparkling looks; or have they
vanished while I have been writing this description of them? No matter;
they will return again when I least think of them. All that I have
observed since, of flowers and plants, and grass-plots, and of
suburb delights, seems to me borrowed from 'that first garden of my
innocence'--to be slips and scions stolen from that bed of memory. In
this manner the darlings of our childhood burnish out in the eye of
after years, and derive their sweetest perfume from the first heartfelt
sigh of pleasure breathed upon them,

Like the sweet south,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour!

If I have pleasure in a flower-garden, I have in a kitchen-garden too,
and for the same reason. If I see a row of cabbage-plants, or of peas or
beans coming up, I immediately think of those which I used so carefully
to water of an evening at Wem, when my day's tasks were done, and of
the pain with which I saw them droop and hang down their leaves in the
morning's sun. Again, I never see a child's kite in the air but it seems
to pull at my heart. It is to me 'a thing of life.' I feel the twinge at
my elbow, the flutter and palpitation, with which I used to let go the
string of my own, as it rose in the air, and towered among the clouds.
My little cargo of hopes and fears ascended with it; and as it made a
part of my own consciousness then, it does so still, and appears 'like
some gay creature of the element,' my playmate when life was young,
and twin-born with my earliest recollections. I could enlarge on this
subject of childish amusements, but Mr. Leigh Hunt has treated it so
well, in a paper in the _Indicator,_ on the productions of the toy-shops
of the metropolis, that if I were to insist more on it I should only
pass for an imitator of that ingenious and agreeable writer, _and for an
indifferent one into the bargain._

Sounds, smells, and sometimes tastes, are remembered longer than
visible objects, and serve, perhaps, better for links in the chain
of association. The reason seems to be this: they are in their nature
intermittent, and comparatively rare; whereas objects of sight are
always before us, and, by their c