others-I became desirous of gaining also those currently in use in Europe; and for this purpose I made a journey to Italy, for Broussa has little or no connection with the civilised world, and, more than any other town in Asia Minor, has retained its national characteristics and primitive customs. On my return I was admitted to the priesthood; and none could have been less qualified than myself for this high calling, as far as humility and self-denying virtue are requisite for it; but the authoritative power with which it invested me, suited well with my aspiring views; and this, along with my immense wealth and great reputation for learning, soon placed me in such an elevated position amongst my townsmen, as gratified to the uttermost my worldly ambition and inordinate pride. Ah! my friends, mine was then the leprosy of the soul-far worse than that which now afflicts my mortal body! Whilst the motives of my best actions sprung from no pure source, I avoided all outward contamination with the most haughty and fastidious care. Too slothful, and too greedy of man's applause, to practise ascetism and retirement from the world, I mingled freely with those of my fellow-men who would admire my knowledge and laud my seeming sanctity, whilst I turned away from all the sinful and degraded without an attempt to reclaim them. To such a height did I carry my abhorrence of all things unclean, that I neglected, in consequence, one entire portion of my duties as priest; this was the care of the leper hospital, established at some distance from the town as a refuge for the victims of that fatal malady, to which a retributive justice has now consigned myself. It is true, in flying from the very sight of these miserable beings, and scrupulously avoiding all contact with them, I only obeyed the custom of the country, and the still more universal law of self-preservation-that which actuates yourselves even now; but it is a rule of the creed I professed that a man should give his life for the brethren, if need be; and therefore that was in me a crime which in others was not so. But the hour of reckoning with me was at hand. There is a certain festival in the Armenian church, when it is customary that the priest should address the people. This was ever for me a day of exultation and vain display, for then only could I manifest the extent of my knowledge, and startle with the thunders of my eloquence.

I loved, in my arrogance, to tower over all that kneeling crowd, and show them what I myself must be in the high standard of virtue I presented for their example! The last time I performed this duty of my calling, the subject I chose was that of charity; and I found an ample field for my stern disdain and bold comparisons, in pointing out to them the wide difference between my own high theories respecting this universal law, and the practical system of its performance in Mohammedan countries, where the master of scores of tortured and crouching slaves erects an hospital for cats, or commands that, after his death, a little reservoir for the rain-water shall be hewn out on his tombstone, that the birds may come and drink. I showed them how, virtually, they had all renounced the common brotherhood which binds in one the human race; how, daily, their rude hands tore asunder the fraternal tie between man and man! And when I had concluded, I passed with haughty step through the ranks of my humbled listeners, and went out to a grove of cypress near the town, to indulge in the pleasant reflections which arose abundantly from my gratified vanity. I had wandered on for some time, wrapt in thought, when a deep groan, sounding near me, caused me to turn round, and I perceived an unhappy wretch, evidently in great suffering, vainly endeavour ing to crawl to a stream that flowed near him, where he might quench his thirst. At a glance-as quickly as you, Inglesi, perceived the malady in me--I saw that he was a leper, and I could easily account for his forlorn situation in this wood, which was near the hospital I have already mentioned. In Asiatic towns, when it is discovered that a man is afflicted with leprosy, especi

ally if it be that species of the disease which is incurable, he becomes, for all his friends and relatives, as one dead, and even those nearest and dearest to him renounce him as utterly as though he were a perfect stranger. Instantly, lest with an hour's delay the contamination should spread, he is driven forth, not only from house and home, but from all human habitation, and left to find his way, in the first agonies of his complaint, to the only refuge left to him, if he perish not on the road, as many do.

'No sooner did this victim of so terrible a doom distinguish the footstep of a man, than, lifting up his voice, he implored of me, by every sacred name, to find means to give him to drink, for that he was perishing of thirst. But I, heedless of his misery, gathered carefully my robes around me, and fled from his presence with abhorrence. As I did so, suddenly, like a warning voice, I seemed to hear, re-echoed back upon my ear, the words which I myself had spoken but an hour before -the burning words, wherein I showed how charity meant love, and sternly announced that on every human being that law of love was laid, commanding them to cherish one another even to their own detriment! My friends, a man may hear the exhortations of another, and callously continue in his sins; but when by his own words he is judged, when his better self stands forward to condemn him, his conscience must be seared, more even than mine had been with all my pride and folly, to enable him to remain in obstinacy. I had been about to leave a fellow-creature to perish in the worst of agonies. I paused-I turned-I hesitated. Then it occurred to me that I could, without much peril to myself, enable the sufferer to reach the water's edge, by taking off my scarf, several yards in length, and giving him one end to hold, whilst the other, grasped in my hands, would enable me to drag him to the streamlet. How little I merited the blessings the leper invoked upon my head as he saw me turn! How he seized my girdle with the energy of one whose life depended on this aid! till slowly, and by toilsome degrees, I drew him to the river's brink. Alas! the effort had so exhausted him, that when there, he was incapable of standing on his feet to descend the bank and drink. I had again turned to leave him. I imagined I could do no more, though I saw that, with the water almost rippling to his feet, he could not obtain one drop for his parched lips. I moved away, despite of his cries. With one desperate effort he threw himself forward. He grasped my robe! I uttered a cry of horror! He seized my hand! Maddened with terror, I tore myself from his grasp. I flung him from me with a violence which sent him rolling backwards amongst the stones; and I fled, as though I were pursued by demons. For the next week, what a life was mine! For ever haunted by one ghastly fear, which embodied all I ever had most dreaded, this much of good was in me even then, that I avoided the personal contact of my friends and servants, lest, even before the disease declared itself, some contagion should spread: and wo is me! never before had the human voice seemed so sweet to me, or my soul so yearned for human sympathy! My heart seemed to swell, even to bursting, with tenderness for those whose friendly hand I dared not touch; and at last the struggle of my feelings was so violent, that I was seized with a raging fever, and became delirious. Inglesi, from that unconsciousness I awoke in the leper hospital! During my illness, the fatal disease communicated to me (as it could not fail to be) by that one touch of the leper's hand had declared itself, and nothing could save me, loved, respected as I had been, from the common doom of my fellow-sufferers: the curse was upon me which for ever separated me from the sympathy of human beings! This only they did for me, in consideration, perhaps, of the position I had held before-they had me conveyed in safety to the hospital, and did not throw me out on the roadside to perish, as was but too customary; but there they left me, and from that hour I existed no more for all who had known or loved me!

value, remembering how an inward conviction in faith and trust could make a solitary leper thrice blest in a desert.'

Whether the Englishmen profited by these admonitions, the record sayeth not. Next morning they departed, to take their part in the stir of life again, but the Armenian leper still dwells alone among the ruins of the temple.

POETS AND FLOWERS.

THE former paper on this subject was confined almost exclusively to our older poets: the present selection will be taken from recent and existing writers; and in pursuing our researches, we cannot but be struck by the endless diversity of ideas and reflections to which the brilliant succession of floral tribes conduces. Johnson tells us, in his sententious style, that there is something inexpressibly pleasing in the annual renovation of the world, and the new display of the treasures of nature. The cold and darkness of winter, with the naked deformity of every object on which we turn our eyes, make us rejoice at the succeeding season, as well for what we have escaped, as for what we may enjoy ; and every budding flower which a warm situation brings early to our view, is considered by us as a messenger to notify the approach of more joyous days.' Cowper says'That man, immured in cities, still retains His inborn inextinguishable thirst

Of rural scenes, compensating his loss

By supplemental shifts, the best he may.

The most unfurnished with the means of life,
And they that never pass the brick-wall bounds,
To range the fields, and treat their lungs with air,
Yet feel the burning instinct; overhead
Suspend their crazy boxes, planted thick,
And watered duly. There the pitcher stands,
A fragment, and the spoutless teapot there;
Sad witnesses how close-pent man regrets
The country, with what ardour he contrives
A peep at nature, when he can no more.'

The poet truly calls the love of nature-of flowers-a 'burning instinct;' for although, in many instances, it is stifled and concealed beneath the husk of gainful pursuits, yet in a thousand others it is a glad and beautiful source of enjoyment. The long green box of mignionette,' as described by Tennyson, cheers the lone dweller in many a close and gloomy alley; its odorous companionship recalling the memory of days passed where fields were green and skies were blue. The writer just quoted observes that

'the dull

See no divinity in grass."

But all are not dull; and the verdant turf refreshes the eyes and soothes the feet of thousands, to whose last resting-places it will one day afford a perennial covering.

One of Tennyson's most beautiful poems, The May Queen,' contains a vivid manifestation of the influence of flowers. The dying girl laments—

'There's not a flower on all the hills; the frost is on the pane; I only wish to live till the snowdrops come again :

I wish the snow would melt, and the sun come out on high; I long to see a flower so before the day I die.' Although not remarkable for extraordinary beauty, we think highly of the first flowers of the season, and prize them above some of the more gaudy varieties that come after their early advent is, in fact, the only claim to notice of many that otherwise would be disregarded. Thus Wordsworth tells us of the celandine, that it

And elsewhere, in a beautifully philosophical and poetical spirit, declares

And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.'

According to an old writer, the cultivation of flowers is, of all the amusements of mankind, the one to be selected and approved as the most innocent in itself, and most perfectly devoid of injury or annoyance to others. The employment is not only conducive to health and peace of mind, but probably more goodwill has arisen, communication connected with this pursuit, than from and friendships been founded, by the intercourse and the horticulturist, are harmless and pure; a streak, a any other whatsoever. The pleasures, the ecstacies of tint, a shade, becomes his triumph, which, though often obtained by chance, are secured alone by morning care, by evening caution, and the vigilance of days: an employ which, in its various grades, excludes neither the opulent nor the indigent; and, teeming with boundless variety, affords an unceasing excitement to emulation, Mrs Barbauld has some pleasing lines to the same effect:

without contention or ill-will.'

'Flowers, the sole luxury that nature knew,
In Eden's pure and guiltless garden grew.
To loftier forms are rougher tasks assigned:
The sheltering oak resists the stormy wind;
The tougher yew repels invading foes;
And the tall pine for future navies grows;
But this soft family, to cares unknown,
Were born for pleasure and delight alone.
Gay without toil, and lovely without art,

They spring to cheer the sense and glad the heart." Flowers have a language, natural and conventional: with the former, they announce the passage of seasons and the flight of hours; the latter is best understood in the sunny East. There the lover selects his floral messengers, and sends to his mistress a graceful compliment, an earnest assurance of constancy, a warning, or a doubt: a thousand emotions may be conveyed by the mute ministers, a thousand similes found in their forms and hues. With what grace Moore gives utterance to Nourmahal's impatient desire for a wreath in "The Feast of Roses :'—

Anemones and seas of gold,

And new-blown lilies of the river,
And those sweet flow'rets, that unfold
Their buds on Camadeva's quiver;
The tube-rose, with her silvery light,
That in the gardens of Malay
Is called the mistress of the night,
So like a bride, scented and bright,

She comes out when the sun's away;
Amaranths such as crown the maids
That wander through Zamara's shades;
And the white moon-flower, as it shows
On Serendib's high crags to those
Who near the isle at evening sail,
Scenting her clove-trees in the gale;
In short, all flow'rets and all plants,
From the divine Amrita tree,
That blesses Heaven's inhabitants
With fruits of immortality,
Down to the basil-tuft that waves
Its fragrant blossom over graves,
And to the humble rosemary,
Whose sweets so thanklessly are shed
To scent the desert and the dead.'

The pedestrian tourist, while wandering over the land in search of the picturesque in landscape scenery, or time-hallowed ruins, well knows the pleasure derived from the sight of flowers clustering round the springs, that, as they run

-' preach

A natural sermon o'er their pebbly beds,' near a dusty road; fringing the little water-courses on some steep hill-side, or relieving the cool gloom of wooded alleys. The writer of the present article well remembers his first view of Scotland. He had walked through the wildest scenes of Northumberland, and after a halt on the fatal field of Chevy Chase, toiled up

the long ascent of the Carter Fell to the highest summit of the Cheviots. From this point the view is most impressive; hill upon hill stretching away for miles, until lost in the blue and distant mountains, and covered so thickly with heather and gowans, as to resemble broad rolling ocean waves of purple and gold. It was a sight, once seen, never to be forgotten; that left no doubt on the mind with respect to its influence as a source of poetic inspiration. It was no longer difficult to sympathise with Burns's enthusiasm on the subject of heather, or to appreciate the beauty of such lines as those by Mrs Grant :

-:

'Flower of the wild! whose purple glow

Adorns the dusky mountain side,

Not the gay hues of Iris' bow,

Nor garden's artful varied pride,

With all its wealth of sweets could cheer,
Like thee, the hardy mountaineer.'

And Scott, describing Marmion's prospect from Blackford Hill:

On Ochil mountains fell the rays,
And as each heathy top they kissed,
It gleamed a purple amethyst.'

Scott is known to have painted from the life: he did not introduce flowers for mere effect, unless they were to be found in the localities he described. The scene

on the shores of Loch Katrine afforded free scope to

his pen :

Boon nature scattered, free and wild,
Each plant or flower, the mountain's child;
Here eglantine embalmed the air,
Hawthorn and hazel mingled there;
The primrose pale and violet flower,
Found in each cliff a narrow bower;
Foxglove and nightshade, side by side,
Emblems of punishment and pride.'

Dreary, indeed, is the land to which nature has denied flowers: the arid deserts of the torrid zone are not altogether deprived of their presence; and even amid the ice and snow of the polar regions, we find them struggling into existence-asserting, as it were, their right to beautify and adorn, though ever so humbly. The fuchsia and clematis grow in abundance in the forests of New Zealand; with the latter, the native girls braid their hair on festive occasions. The gorgeousness of flowers in tropical climates is scarcely to be imagined by the inhabitants of countries farther from the sun. The rock lily of New South Wales grows to a height of thirty feet, crowned by a profusion of brilliant scarlet flowers. How different this from the

'fair lily, faint with weeping, Upon a bed of violets sleeping!'

Or the water lily, as described by Mrs Hemans

Oh! beautiful thou art,

Thou sculpture-like and stately river queen,
Crowning the depths as with the light serene
Of a pure heart.

Bright lily of the wave!

Rising in fearless grace with every swell,
Thou seem'st as if a spirit meekly brave
Dwelt in thy cell.'

Shelley also has sung of the lily in musical verse: growing in the garden with the sensitive plant and other flowers was

'the naiad-like lily of the vale,

Whom youth makes so fair, and passion so pale, That the light of its tremulous bells is seen Through their pavilions of tender green.'

he represent the fairies supplicating grim Saturn to spare their lives, urging their attentions to

The widowed primrose weeping to the moon,
And saffron crocus, in whose chalice bright
A cool libation, hoarded for the noon,
Is kept; and she that purifies the light,
The virgin lily, faithful to her white,
Whereon Eve wept in Eden for her shame;
And the most dainty rose, Aurora's spright,
Our every godchild, by whatever name-

Spare us our lives, for we did nurse the same!' Of all the poets, Keats appears to be the most imbued with the floral feeling: flowers are so exquisitely blended with his subjects, that it seems like sacrilege to disturb their harmonious proportions by the singling out of fragments. 'The poetry of earth,' he tells us, 'is never dead.'

-'I was light-hearted,

And many pleasures to my vision started;
So I straightway began to pluck a posy

Of luxuries bright, milky, soft, and rosy.

A bush of May-flowers with the bees about them;
Ah! sure no tasteful nook could be without them!

And let a lush laburnum oversweep them,

And let long grass grow round their roots, to keep them
Moist, cool, and green; and shade the violets,
That they may bind the moss in leafy nets.'

Lilies have always been considered as emblematic of purity and humility. Ben Jonson says delicately of one

of his characters, that she

'looks as lilies do,

That were this morning blown.'

And a living authoress, Mrs Robert Browning, writes in one of her sonnets, a thought lay like a flower upon mine heart;' an expression of as much truth as beauty. In another place she introduces to our notice

-'lilies white, prepared to touch The whitest thought, nor soil it much ;' and elsewhere sets before us the following 'Lesson from the Gorse:'—

Mountain blossoms, shining blossoms !
Do ye teach us to be glad

When no summer can be had,
Blooming in our inward bosoms?
Ye, whom God preserveth still,
Set as lights upon a hill,

Tokens to the wintry earth, that beauty liveth still!'

Her lament of the flower-spirits on the banishment of Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden, is a most harmonious strain of mournful music :

To the rose in the bower-place,
That dripped o'er you sleeping;
To the asphodel flower-place,
Ye walked ankle-deep in!
We pluck at your raiment,
We stroke down your hair,
We faint in our lament,
And pine into air.'

It would be easy to fill a volume with all that poets

moral teachings of Herrick, says

'The lily is all in white, like a saint,

And so is no mate for me;

And the daisy's cheek is tipped with a blush,
She is of such low degree.

-Jasmine is sweet, and has many loves,

And the broom's betrothed to the bee;

But I will plight with the dainty rose,
For fairest of all is she.'

so abundant, as to render the task of selection one of some difficulty. Flowers are associated with the loftiest and with the humblest names: for the roses to decorate a single supper, Cleopatra paid L.200. Such was the lavishness with which the Romans indulged their taste for flowers, that sumptuary laws were enacted to restrain it. Verres, when governor of Sicily, made the tour of the island reclining on a couch of roses, shaded by festoons of choicer flowers. The horticultural his

dex to their civil and political history. Herbs and the commoner flowers would be at first in request; but with increase of wealth, and acquisitions of conquest, costly exotics would be cultivated, and nature distorted to suit the freaks of fashion. There is much in the history of the past to make us say with the poet-

'Despise not thou the wildflower! Small it seems,
And of neglected growth, and its light bells
Hang carelessly on every passing gale:
Yet it is finely wrought, and colours there
Might shame the Tyrian purple; and it bears
Marks of a care eternal and divine.

Duly the dews descend to give it food;

The sun revives it drooping, and the showers
Add to its beauty; and the airs of heaven
Are round it for delight.'

MR MILNE ON THE POTATO FAILURE. MR MILNE is known for his scientific papers, in which we usually find general conclusions arrived at by induction from a great collection of facts. Having turned his attention to the investigation of the Potato Failure of the two last seasons, we are here furnished with a set of observations on the subject, drawn up in the author's usual lucid and painstaking manner.* We learn that the theory of the disease having been produced by insects is inadmissible, because it showed itself before there was any appearance of insects. Fungi must equally be rejected, for those in the tubers were of different species from those in the leaves: such vegetation appears to have been a result, not the cause, of the disease. The evil could not spring from any over-cultivation of the plant, for specimens brought directly from Peru were affected equally as others. It could not be because the plant has come to the close of its existence as a species, seeing that the disease attacked many other plants, as pease, cabbage, tansy, spinach, and even elms and oaks. Then the weather, the temperature, rains, are all in like manner discarded, because, from a vast amount of evidence collected by Mr Milne, it appears that the disease was irrespective of all such conditions. The weather of 1845 and 1846 appears to have been noway extraordinary, and in the latter year vegetation was everywhere abundant till the time when the potato disease began to show itself.

Mr Milne arrives at the conclusion that the cause was atmospheric, and he deems it probable that the evil lay in some deleterious substance diffused through the air at the time of the disease. There are facts, he thinks, even to show to a certain extent the properties of this substance. In the first place, it is a substance, the injurious effects of which have been prevented by screens, shelter, and other modes of protection.' In several cases glass frames placed over the plants saved them from the disease, while other plants close by were destroyed. There were several instances of the crops of indolent farmers being saved, while those of careful farmers suffered; and this could be attributed to no other cause than that the potatoes, in the former set of cases, were screened by the weeds which had been suffered to grow over them. In a field which had potatoes sown with barley, several of the ungathered tubers had grown in the corn, and not a single plant of these was even in the slightest degree diseased.' Mr Colin Campbell's overseer at Craignish states, that potatoes planted on the farm with different manures, and on various soils, were alike tainted. I, however, observed, that when they were sheltered by a stone wall or trees, or when overgrown with weeds, they were not diseased, and have continued sound.' Such experiences are reported from so many other quarters, that Mr Milne regards it as established, that potatoes were saved where screened from the external air, or rather

from the blowing on them of the external air.' 'The effects,' he says, 'seem analogous to what occurs to vegetation near the sea-shore, where it is much exposed. It is of course not the oxygen or nitrogen of the atmosphere which, on the sea-coast, produces an injury to vegetation not produced elsewhere; nor is it the mere cold, because places at a high level inland are exposed to more cold than at the sea level, and yet show none of the peculiar effects on vegetation observable on the sea-shore. There must, therefore, be some particular substance or substances in the sea air to blight the leaves of trees and plants, unless sheltered. These may either be the salts of the sea-water, which are always floating in greater or less abundance upon the winds that come from the sea, and which, being arrested and absorbed by the leaves, may cause their blight and death; or it may arise from the presence of chlorine gas, supposed to be liberated, under certain circumstances, from the chloride of magnesium, which exists in sea-water; and which gas is known by direct experiment to be exceedingly injurious to vegetation. I do not say that chlorine gas, or the saline vapour of to the potato crops; I refer to them merely in illussea-water, are the substances which proved injurious tration of the principle, that when vegetables are injured by the blowing of air, and in circumstances when the mere air would produce, by blowing, no injurious effects, it is probable that there must be some other substance than the ordinary elements of the atmosphere to cause these effects.'

Mr Milne adduces another set of facts, showing that the disease travelled from the south-west to the northland to the Orkneys. He quotes a correspondent of east, taking three months to go from the south of Irethe Gardeners' Chronicle, who tells that his potatoes were affected first on the south-west side of the plants. There is also a curious fact reported by an Aberdeenshire gentleman. Two fields under his observation were affected partially; in the one case, by lines of blight athwart the field; in the other, by the blight of one side, leaving the rest sound; and the direction of the blight in these cases was from south-east to north-west. For some time before, the weather had been very sultry, with a light fog or haze travelling very slowly over the surface of the earth, from the southeast to the north-west.' Supposing a deleterious substance carried by the wind, it readily occurs, says Mr Milne, that any obstruction, such as trees and other prominent objects, might turn it aside from particular portions of the surface.

Mr Milne then proceeds to remark, that the crops near the Welsh copper-works were comparatively exempt from the disease, the more so the nearer to the works, although the smoke of the furnaces is generally unfavourable to vegetation. There was also less experience of the disease in situations close upon the seashore than in inland places. A crop reared on land newly reclaimed from the sea, and out of which no means had been taken to wash the salt, was a luxuriant soot and guano (substances containing much ammonia) one. It was also remarked that potatoes manured with were comparatively sound. From these various facts,' says our author, I infer that the substance in the atmosphere which injured the potato crops was some acrid gas or vapour, capable of being neutralised or altered in its nature by chlorine, common smoke, and the fumes of arsenious and sulphurous acids.'

A

* Observations on the Probable Cause of the Failure of the

Edinburgh: William Black wood and Sons. 1847.

the disease followed in a few days. An Orkney farmer