pleasure in a country life, and rural associations, perhaps this image will appear scarcely less poetical, or less pleasing, than the former interpretation, which many readers give to this passage at first sight.

This tree not only delights our senses with its beauty and perfume, and affords a cooling shade in sunny fields, a benevolence for which it has been celebrated by many of our best poets, but it also harbours the little birds which cheer us with their joyous music. The thrush, and many others, feed in winter on its berries, the bright scarlet haws. A decoction of the bark yields a yellow dye: the wood is used for axle-trees and tool-handles. "The root of an old Thorn," says Evelyn," is excellent for boxes and combs. When planted single, it rises with a stem big enough for the use of the turner; and the wood is scarcely inferior to box.”

The Glastonbury variety, commonly called the Glastonbury Thorn, usually flowers in January or February; but it is sometimes in blossom on Christmas-day. In many countries the peasants eat the berries of the Hawthorn; and the Kamschatkadales make a wine from them.

The Hawthorn will grow many years in a pot or tub, and require no other care than watering it occasionally in dry weather, and removing it into a larger pot as it outgrows the old one.

The scent of the May-blossom is proverbially sweet. How much is said in praise both of its beauty and sweetness in the following couplet!

1

"A bush of May-flowers with the bees about them;
Ah, sure no tasteful nook would be without them."

KEATS.

Chaucer frequently speaks of the Hawthorn : "There sawe I growing eke the freshe hauthorne In white motley, that so sote doeth ysmell."

COMPLAINT OF THE BLACK KNIGHT.

In the celebration of May-day, in the Court of Love, he says:

"And furth goth all the Courte both most and lest
To fetche the flouris freshe, and braunch and blome,
And namely hauthorne brought both page and grome,
With fresh garlandis, party blew and white,
And than rejoysin in their grete delight."

"Amongst the many buds proclaiming May,
(Decking the fields in holiday's array,
Striving who shall surpasse in bravery)
Marke the faire blooming of the hawthorne-tree;
Who, finely cloathed in a robe of white,
Feeds full the wanton eye with May's delight;
Yet for the bravery that she is in

Doth neyther handle carde nor wheele to spin,

Nor changeth robes but twice, is never seene
In other colors than in white or greene.

Learn then content, young shepherd, from this tree,
Whose greatest wealth is Nature's livery.”

"All the trees are quaintly tyred
With greene buds of all desired;
And the hauthorne every day
Spreads some little show of May.
See the primrose sweetly set
By the much-loved violet,

All the bankes doe sweetly cover

As they would invite a lover

With his lass, to see their dressing,

And to grace them by their pressing."
W. BROWNE.

""Tis May, the Grace,-confess'd she stands
By branch of hawthorn in her hands:
Lo! near her trip the lightsome dews,
Their wings all tinged in iris hues;
With whom the powers of Flora play,
And paint with pansies all the way."

WARTON.

Philips, in his Letter from Copenhagen, beautifully describes the appearance of the Hawthorn in the winter:

"In pearls and rubies rich the hawthorns show,

While through the ice the crimson berries glow."

There is a beautiful address to the Hawthorn in the poems of Ronsard. The following version *, which is from the pen of the Rev. Mr. Cary, is so faithful, and so happy, that the French poet will suffer no injustice if we quote the translation only:

"Fair hawthorn flowering,

With green shade bowering
Along this lovely shore;
To thy foot around

With his long arms wound
A wild vine has mantled thee o'er.

"In armies twain,

Red ants have ta'en

Their fortress beneath thy stock:

And in clefts of thy trunk
Tiny bees have sunk

A cell where honey they lock.

"In merry spring-tide,

When to woo his bride
The nightingale comes again,
Thy boughs among
He warbles his song,
That lightens a lover's pain.

"'Mid thy topmost leaves
His nest he weaves

Of moss and the satin fine,
Where his callow brood
Shall chirp at their food,
Secure from each hand but mine.

"Gentle hawthorn, thrive,

And, for ever alive,

Mayst thou blossom as now in thy prime;

See "Notices of the Early French Poets," in the London Maga

zine, vol. v. p. 511.

By the wind unbroke,

And the thunderstroke,

Unspoiled by the axe of time."

The following lines by another French poet, Olivier de Magny, addressed to Ronsard's servant, present a most delightful picture:

"And if he with his troops repair

Sometimes into the fields,

Seek thou the village nigh, and there
Choose the best wine it yields.
Then by a fountain's grassy side,
O'er which some hawthorn bends,
Be the full flask by thee supplied,
To cheer him and his friends."

LONDON MAGAZINE, vol. v. p. 159.

VIOLE.

HEART'S-EASE.

VIOLA TRICOLOR.

SYNGENESIA MONOGYNIA.

French, herbe de la Trinité; pensées [thoughts].—Italian, flammola [little flame]; viola farfalla [butterfly violet]; viola segolina [winged violet]; fior della Trinita; suocera e nuora [mother-in-law and daughter-in-law]. The Greeks have named it phlox [a flame.]

THIS beautiful flower is a native of Siberia, Japan, and many parts of Europe. Mr. Brooke, speaking of the forests in Sweden, says, " innumerable flowers of the liveliest colours peeped out between the masses of brown rock, enamelled with various kinds of lichens; and huge fragments were variegated with beds of the Pansy, or Heart'sease, displaying its different hues, relieved by the darkgreen of the sweeping pines." It is a general favourite, as might be supposed from the infinity of provincial names

* Brooke's Sweden, p. 54.

Call me to you.

Cull me to you.

Kiss me ere I rise.

Kiss me behind the Garden-gate.

Three Faces under a Hood. Pink of my John.

And Flamy, because its colours are seen in the flame of wood.

It is a species of violet, and is frequently called the Pansy-violet, or Pansy, a corruption of the French name, pensées.

The smaller varieties are scentless, but the larger ones have an agreeable odour. Drayton celebrates its perfume by the flowers with which he compares it in this respect; but then, to be sure, his is an Elysian Heart's-ease:

"The Pansy and the violet, here,

As seeming to descend

Both from one root, a very pair,
For sweetness do contend.

"And pointing to a pink to tell

Which bears it, it is loth
To judge it; but replies, for smell
That it excels them both.

"Wherewith displeased they hang their heads,

So angry soon they grow,
And from their odoriferous beds

Their sweets at it they throw.”

The Heart's-ease has been lauded by many of our poets; it has been immortalised even by Shakspeare himself; but no one has been so warm and constant in its praise as Mr. Hunt, who has mentioned it in many of his works. In the Feast of the Poets, he entwines it with the Vine and the Bay, for the wreath bestowed by Apollo upon Mr. T. Moore. In the notes to that little volume, he again speaks