scent of those good-natured leaves, which allow you to carry off their perfume on your fingers: for good-natured they are, in that respect, above almost all plants, and fittest for the hospitalities of your rooms. The very feel of the leaf has a household warmth in it something analogous to clothing and comfort. Why does not everybody (who can afford it) have a geranium in his window, or some other flower? It is very cheap; its cheapness is next to nothing if you raise it from seed, or from a slip; and it is a beauty and a companion. It sweetens the air, rejoices the eye, links you with nature and innocence, and is something to love. And if it cannot love you in return, it cannot hate you; it cannot utter a hateful thing, even for your neglecting it; for though it is all beauty, it has no vanity and such being the case, and living as it does purely to do you good and afford you pleasure, how will you be able to neglect it? : But pray, if you choose a geranium, or possess but a few of them, let us persuade you to choose the scarlet kind, the "old original" geranium, and not a variety of it, not one of the numerous diversities of red and white, blue and white, ivy-leaved, &c. Those are all beautiful, and very fit to vary a large collection; but to prefer them to the originals of the race is to run the hazard of preferring the curious to the beautiful, and costliness to sound taste. It may be taken as a good general rule, that the most popular plants are the best; for other wise they would not have become such. And what the painters call "pure colours," are preferable to mixed ones, for reasons which Nature herself has given when she painted the sky of one colour, and the fields of another, and divided the rainbow itself into a few distinct hues, and made the red rose the queen of flowers. Variations of flowers are like variations in music, often beautiful as such, but almost always inferior to the theme on which they are founded, the original air. And the rule holds good in beds of flowers, if they be not very large, or in any other small assemblage of them. Nay, the largest bed will look well, if of one beautiful colour; while the most beautiful varieties may be inharmoniously mixed up. Contrast is a good thing, but we should first get a good sense of the thing to be contrasted, and we shall find this preferable to the contrast if we are not rich enough to have both in due measure. We do not in general love and honour any one single colour enough, and we are instinctively struck with a conviction to this effect when we see it abundantly set forth. The other day we saw a little garden-wall completely covered with nasturtiums, and felt how much more beautiful it was than if anything had been mixed with it. For the leaves, and the light and shade, offer variety enough. The rest is all richness and simplicity united,-which is the triumph of an intense perception. Embower a cottage thickly and completely with nothing but roses, and nobody would desire the interference of another plant. Everything is handsome about the geranium, not excepting its name; which cannot be said of all flowers, though we get to love ugly words when associated with pleasing ideas. The word "geranium" is soft and elegant; the meaning is poor, for it comes from a Greek word signifying a crane, the fruit having a form resembling that of a crane's head or bill. Crane's-bill is the English name of Geranium; though the learned appellation has superseded the vernacular. But what a reason for naming the flower! as if the fruit were anything in comparison, or any one cared about it. Such distinctions, it is true, are useful to botanists; but as plenty of learned names are sure to be reserved for the free-masonry of the science, it would be better for the world at large to invent joyous and beautiful names for these images of joy and beauty. In some instances, we have them; such as heart's-ease, honeysuckle, marigold, mignonette (little darling), daisy (day's-eye), &c. And many flowers are so lovely, and have associated names otherwise unmeaning so pleasantly with one's memory, that no new ones would sound so well, or seem even to have such proper significations. In pronouncing the words, lilies, roses, pinks, tulips, jonquils, we see the things themselves, and seem to taste all their beauty and sweetness. "Pink," is a harsh petty word in itself, and yet assuredly it does not seem so; for in the word we have the flower. It would be difficult to persuade ourselves that the word rose is not very beautiful. "Pea" is a poor Chinese-like monosyllable; and "Briar" is rough and fierce, as it ought to be; but when we think of Sweet-pea and Sweetbriar, the words appear quite worthy of their epithets. The poor monosyllable becomes rich in sweetness and appropriation; the rough dissyllable also; and the sweeter for its contrast. But what can be said in behalf of liverwort, blood-wort, dragon's head, devil's bit, and devil in a bush? There was a charming line in some verses in last week's London Journal, written by a lady. -"the bright consummate flower!" polite, are neither pretty in themselves, nor then the main stalk rising and producing give us information. The country people are more; then one of them giving indications of apt to do them more justice. Goldy-locks, an astonishing novelty, a bud! then this mysladies'-fingers, bright-eye, rose-a-rubie, shep-terious, lovely bud gradually unfolding like the herd's-clock, shepherd's-purse, sauce-alone, leaf, amazing us, enchanting us, almost alarmscarlet runners, sops-in-wine, sweet-william, ing us with delight, as if we knew not what &c. give us some ideas either useful or pleasant. enchantment were to ensue: till at length, in But from the peasantry also come many un- all its fairy beauty, and odorous voluptuouscongenial names, as bad as those of the botaness, and mysterious elaboration of tender and nists. Some of the latter are handsome as living sculpture, shone forth well as learned, have meanings easily found out by a little reading or scholarship, and are taking their place accordingly in popular nomenclatures: as amaranth, adonis, arbutus, asphodel, &c., but many others are as ugly as they are far-fetched, such as colchicum, tagetes, yucca, ixia, mesembryanthemum; and as to the Adansonias, Browallias, Koempferias, John Tomkinsias, or whatever the personal names may be that are bestowed at the botanical font by their proud discoverers or godfathers, we have a respect for botanists and their pursuits, and wish them all sorts of "little immortalities" except these unless they could unite them with something illustrative of the flower as well as themselves. A few, certainly, we should not like to displace, Browallia for one, which was given to a Peruvian flower by Linnæus, in honour of a friend of his of the name of Browall; but the name should have included some idea of the thing named. The Browallia is remarkable for its brilliancy. "We cannot," says Mr. Curtis, "do it justice by any colours we have*." Now why not have called it Browall's Beauty? or Browall's Inimitable? The other day we were admiring an enormously beautiful apple, and were told it was called "Kirk's Admirable," after the gardener who raised it. We felt the propriety of this name directly. It was altogether to the purpose. There was use and beauty together-the name of the raiser and the excellence of the fruit raised. It is a pity that all fruits and flowers, and animals too, except those with good names, could not be passed in review before somebody with a genius for christening, as the creatures did before Adam in Paradise, and so have new names given them, worthy of their creation. Suppose flowers themselves were new! Suppose they had just come into the world, a sweet reward for some new goodness: and that we had not yet seen them quite developed; that they were in the act of growing; had just issued with their green stalks out of the ground, and engaged the attention of the curious. Imagine what we should feel when we saw the first lateral stem bearing off from the main one, or putting forth a leaf. How we should watch the leaf gradually unfolding its little graceful hand; then another, then another; *We learn this from the Flora Domestica, an elegant and poetry-loving book, specially intended for cultivators of flowers at home. Yet this phenomenon, to a mind of any thought and lovingness, is what may be said to take place every day; for the commonest objects are only wonders at which habit has made us cease to wonder, and the marvellousness of which we may renew at pleasure, by taking thought. Last spring, walking near some cultivated grounds, and seeing a multitude of green stalks peeping forth, we amused ourselves with likening them to the plumes or other headgear of fairies, and wondering what faces might ensue; and from this exercise of the fancy, we fell to considering how true, and not merely fanciful those speculations were; what a perpetual reproduction of the marvellous was carried on by Nature; how utterly ignorant we were of the causes of the least and most disesteemed of the commonest vegetables; and what a quantity of life, and beauty, and mystery, and use, and enjoyment, was to be found in them, composed out of all sorts of elements, and shaped as if by the hands of fairies. What workmanship, with no apparent workman! What consummate elegance, though the result was to be nothing (as we call it) but a radish or an onion, and these were to be consumed, or thrown away by millions! A rough tree grows up, and at the tips of his rugged and dark fingers he puts forth,-round, smooth, shining, and hanging delicately, the golden apple, or the cheek-like beauty of the peach. The other day we were in a garden where Indian corn was growing, and some of the cobs were plucked to show us. First one leaf or sheath was picked off, then another, then another, then a fourth, and so on, as if a fruitseller was unpacking fruit out of papers; and at last we came, inside, to the grains of the corn, packed up into cucumber-shapes of pale gold, and each of them pressed and flattened against each other, as if some human hand had been doing it in the caverns of the earth. BUT WHAT HAND! The same that made the poor yet rich hand (for is it not his workmanship also?) that is tracing these marvelling lines, and which if it does not tremble to write them, it is because Love sustains, and because the heart also is a flower which has a right to be tranquil in the garden of the All-Wise. VIII.-A WORD ON EARLY RISING. As we are writing this article before breakfast, at an earlier hour than usual, we are inclined to become grand and intolerant on the strength of our virtue, and to look around us and say, "Why is not every body up? How can people lie in bed at an hour like this,-'the cool, the fragrant?" " "Falsely luxurious, will not man awake!" Thus exclaimed good-natured, enjoying Thomson, and lay in bed till twelve; after which he strolled into his garden at Richmond, and ate peaches off a tree, with his hands in his waistcoat pockets! Browsing! A perfect specimen of a poetical elephant or rhinoceros! Thomson, however, left an immortal book behind him, which excused his trespasses. What excuse shall mortality bring for hastening its end by lying in bed, and anticipating the grave? for of all apparently innocent habits lying in bed is perhaps the worst; while on the other hand, amidst all the different habits through which people have attained to a long life, it is said that in this one respect, and this only, they have all agreed! No very long-lived man has been a late riser. Judge Holt is said to have been curious respecting longevity, and to have questioned every very old man that came before him, as to his modes of living; and in the matter of early rising there was no variation : every one of them got up betimes. One lived chiefly upon meat, another upon vegetables; one drank no fermented liquors, another did drink them; a fifth took care not to expose himself to the weather, another took no such care; but every one of them was an early riser. All made their appearance at Nature's earliest levee, and she was pleased that they hailed her as soon as she waked, and that they valued her fresh air, and valued her skies, and her birds, and her balmy quiet; or if they thought little of this, she was pleased that they took the first step in life, every day, calculated to make them happiest and most healthy; and so she laid her hands upon their heads, and pronounced them good old boys, and enabled them to run about at wonderful ages, while their poor senior juniors were tumbling in down and gout. A most pleasant hour it is certainly,-when you are once up. The birds are singing in the trees; everything else is noiseless, except the air, which comes sweeping every now and then through the sunshine, hindering the coming day from being hot. We feel it on our face, as we write. At a distance, far off, a dog occasionally barks; and some huge fly is loud upon the window-pane. It is sweet to drink in at one's ears these innocent sounds, and this very sense of silence, and to say to one's self, "We are up; -we are up, and are doing well;-the beautiful creation is not unseen and unheard for want of us." Oh, it's a prodigious moment when the vanity and the virtue can go together. We shall not say how early we write this article, lest we should appear immodest, and excite envy and despair. Neither shall we mention how often we thus get up, or the hour at which we generally rise,—leaving our readers to hope the best of us; in return for which we will try to be as little exalted this morning as the sense of advantage over our neighbours will permit, and not despise them-a great stretch for an uncommon sense of merit. There for instance is C.;-hard at it, we would swear; as fast asleep as a church :-of what value are his books now, and his subtleties, and his speculations? as dead, poor man! as if they never existed. What proof is there of an immortal soul in that face with its eyes shut, and its mouth open, and not a word to say for itself, any more than the dog's?-And W. there ;what signifies his love for his children and his garden, neither of which he is now alive to, though the child-like birds are calling him, hopping amidst their songs; and his breakfast would have twice the relish ?-And the L.'s with their garden and their music?—the orchard has all the music to itself; they will not arise to join it, though Nature manifestly intends concerts to be of a morning as well as evening, and the animal Spirits are the first that are up in the universe. Then the streets and squares. Very much do we fear, that, for want of a proper education in these thoughts, the milkman, instead of de-. spising all these shut-up windows, and the sleeping incapables inside, envies them for the riches that keep injuring their diaphragms and digestions, and that will render their breakfast not half so good as his. "Call you these gentlefolks?" said a new maid-servant, in a family of our acquaintance, "why, they get up early in the morning!-Only make me a lady, and see if I wouldn't lie a-bed." Seriously speaking, we believe that there is not a wholesomer thing than early rising, or one which, if persevered in for a very little while, would make a greater difference in the sensations of those who suffer from most causes of illhealth, particularly the besetting disease of these sedentary times, indigestion. We believe it would supersede the supposed necessity of a great deal of nauseous and pernicious medicine, that pretended friend, and ultimately certain foe, of all impatient stomachs. Its utility in other respects everybody acknowledges, though few profit by it as they might. Nothing renders a man so completely master of the day before him; so gets rid of arrears, anticipates the necessity of haste, and insures leisure. Sir Walter Scott is said to have written all his greatest works before breakfast; he thus also procured time for being one of the most social of friends, and kind and attentive of correspondents. One sometimes regrets that experience passes into the shape of proverbs, since those who make C use of them are apt to have no other knowledge, and thus procure for them a worldly character of the lowest order. Franklin did them no good, in this respect, by crowding them together in "Poor Richard's Almanack;" and Cervantes intimated the common-place abuse into which they were turning, by putting them into the mouth of Sancho Panza. Swift completed the ruin of some of them, in this country, by mingling them with the slip-slop of his "Polite Conversation,"- -a Tory libel on the talk of the upper ranks, to which nothing comparable is to be found in the Whig or Radical objections of modern times. Yet, for the most part, proverbs are equally true and generous; and there is as much profit for others as for a man's self in believing that "Early to bed and early to rise, will make a man healthy, and wealthy, and wise;" for the voluntary early riser is seldom one who is insensible to the beauty as well as the uses of the spring of day; and in becoming healthy and wise, as well as rich, he becomes good-humoured and considerate, and is disposed to make a handsome use of the wealth he acquires. Mere saving and sparing (which is the ugliest way to wealth) permits a man to lie in bed as long as most other people, especially in winter, when he saves fire by it; but a gallant acquisition should be as stirring in this respect, as it is in others, and thus render its riches a comfort to it, instead of a means of unhealthy care, and a preparation for disappointment. How many rich men do we not see jaundiced and worn, not with necessary care but superfluous, and secretly cursing their riches, as if it were the fault of the money itself, and not of the bad management of their health? These poor, unhappy, rich people, come at length to hug their money out of a sort of spleen and envy at the luckier and less miserable poverty that wants it, and thus lead the lives of dogs in the manger, and are almost tempted to hang themselves: whereas, if they could purify the current of their blood a little, which, perhaps, they might do by early rising alone, without a penny for physic, they might find themselves growing more patient, more cheerful, more liberal, and be astonished and delighted at receiving the praises of the community for their public spirit, and their patronage of noble institutions. Oh, if we could but get half London up at an earlier hour, how they, and our colleges and universities, and royal academies, &c., would all take a start together; and how the quack advertisements in the newspapers would diminish! But we must not pretend, meanwhile, to be more virtuous ourselves than frail teachers are apt to be. The truth is, that lying in bed is so injurious to our particular state of health, that we are early risers in self-defence; and we were not always such; so that we are qualified to speak to both sides of the question. And as to our present article, it is owing to a relapse! and we fear is a very dull one in consequence; for we are obliged to begin it earlier than usual, in consequence of being late. We shall conclude it with the sprightliest testimony we can call to mind in favour of early rising, which is that of James the First, the royal poet of Scotland, a worthy disciple of Chaucer, who, when he was kept in unjust captivity during his youth by Henry the Fourth, fell in love with his future excellent queen, in consequence of seeing her through his prison windows walking in a garden at break of day, as Palamon and Arcite did Emilia; which caused him to exclaim, in words that might be often quoted by others out of gratitude to the same hour, though on a different occasion, A silver-fork, and breast of pheasant on't, By thinking of sheer tea, and bread and butter. Nay let us do him justice too. Fancy is a good thing, though pheasant may be better. Come, let us see what he says;-let us look at his Barmecide breakfast ;-at all the good things I am to eat and drink without tasting them. Editor. Reader, thou art one of the right sort.-Thy fancy is large, though thy street be narrow. In one thing only do we find thee deficient. Thy faith is not perfect. Reader. How? Am I not prepared to enjoy what I cannot have? And do I not know the Barmecide? Am I not a reader of the Arabian Nights,-a willing visitor of that facetious personage, who set the imaginary feast before the poor hungry devil Shacabac, and made him drunk with invisible wine, till, in the retributive intoxication of the humour, mine host got his ears boxed? Editor. Hallo-what is that you are saying? -Oh you "intend nothing personal." Well, it is luckily added; for, look you-we should otherwise have "heaped coals of fire on your head." The want of faith we complain of is not the want of faith in books and fancies, but in us and our intentions towards thyself; for the mistakers, did not enjoy even what they do by their very assistance! Why they have fancies for this or that tea-cup, this or that coat, this or that pretty face! They get handsome wives, when they can, as well as other people, and when plain ones would be quite as "useful!" How is that? They pretend to admire the green fields, the blue sky, and would be ashamed to be insensible to the merits of the flowers. How can they take upon them to say where the pre is we are to cease turning these perceptions of pleasure and elegance to account? how camest thou to suppose that we intended omitting thy breakfast,-thy unsophisticated cup of bohea, and most respectable bread and butter? Why, it is of and to such breakfasts, that we write most. The others, unless their refinement be of the true, universal sort, might fancy they could do without us; whereas those that really can do so, are not unwilling to give us reception, for sympathy's sake, if for nothing else. To enjoy is to reciprocate. We have the honour (in this our paper person) of appear-cise line should be drawn, and at what point it ing at some of the most refined breakfast-tables in the kingdom, some of these being at the same time the richest, and some the poorest, that epicure could seek or eschew; that is to say, unintellectual epicure; and when such a man is found at either, we venture to affirm that he misses the best things to be found near him. It does not become us to name names; but we may illustrate the matter by saying, that, had it been written forty years back, we have good reason to think that the intentions of this our set of essays would have procured it no contemptuous welcome at the breakfasttable of Fox with his lords about him, or Burns with his "bonnie Jeanie" at his side. Porcelain, or potter's-clay, silver or pewter, potted meats, oatmeal, or bacon, are all one to us, provided there is a good appetite, and a desire to make the best of what is before us. Without that, who would breakfast with the richest of fools! And with it, who that knows the relish of wit and good-humour, would not sit down to the humblest fare with inspired poverty? Now the art of making the best of what is before us, (not in forgetfulness of social advancement, but in encouragement of it, and in aid of the requisite activity or patience, as the case may require,) is one of the main objects of this publication; and as the commoner breakfast seems to require it most, it is to such tables the present paper is chiefly addressed,-always supposing that the breakfaster is of an intelligent sort; and not without a hope of suggesting a pleasant fancy or so to the richest tables that may want it. And there are too many such!--perhaps because the table has too many "good things" on it already, too much potted gout, and twelveshilling irritability. Few people, rich or poor, make the most of what they possess. In their anxiety to increase the amount of the means for future enjoyment, they are too apt to lose sight of the capability of them for present. Above all, they overlook the thousand helps to enjoyment which lie round about them, free to everybody, and obtainable by the very willingness to be pleased, assisted by that fancy and imagination which nature has bestowed, more or less, upon all human beings. Some miscalled Utilitarians, incapable of their own master's doctrine, may affect to undervalue fancy and imagination, as though they were not constituent properties of the human mind, and as if they themselves, The first requisite towards enjoying a breakfast, or anything else, is the willingness to be pleased; and the greatest proof and security of this willingness, is the willingness to please others. "Better" (says a venerable text) "is a dinner of herbs, where peace is, than a stalled ox with contention." Many a breakfast, that has every other means of enjoyment, is turned to bitterness, by unwilling discordant looks, perhaps to the great misery of some persons present, who would give and receive happiness, if at any other table. Now breakfast is a foretaste of the whole day. Spoil that, and we probably spoil all. Begin it well, and if we are not very silly or ill-taught persons indeed, and at the mercy of every petty impulse of anger and offence, we in all probability make the rest of the day worthy of it. These petty impulses are apt to produce great miseries. And the most provoking part of the business is, that for want of better teaching, or of a little forethought, or imagination, they are sometimes indulged in by people of good hearts, who would be ready to tear their hair for anguish, if they saw you wounded or in a fit, and yet will make your days a heap of wretchedness, by the eternal repetition of these absurdities. It being premised then that persons must come to breakfast without faces sour enough to turn the milk, (and we begin to think that our cautions on this head are unnecessary to such readers as are likely to patronise us) we have to inform the most unpretending breakfaster-the man the least capable of potted meats, partridges, or preserves, that in the commonest tea-equipage and fare which is set upon his board, he possesses a treasure of pleasant thoughts; and that if he can command but the addition of a flower, or a green bough, or a book, he may add to them a visible grace and luxury, such as the richest wits in the nation would respect. "True taste," says one of these very persons, (Mr. Rogers, in his notes to a poem,) “is an excellent economist. She delights in producing great effects by small means." This maxim holds good, we see, even amidst the costliest elegancies; how much more is it precious to those whose means are of necessity small, while their hearts are large! Suppose the reader is forced to be an economist, and to have nothing |