One wild species, the _Mountain Pink_ (_Dianthus cœsius_), it has never been my fortune to gather in its native home. It is described as a large handsome flower, and it loves to breathe the "difficult air" of the lofty mountain-top. "Never," we are told, "is it found in plain or valley; but it is one of those blossoms whose beauty gladdens the mountaineer, or bids the traveller wonder that so lovely a flower should be blushing on the lone summit, scarcely accessible to his footstep; or cheering a rock, where only the yellow lichen, or the verdant or gray moss, reminds him of vegetation. Such a sight might bid one think of the old motto, which accompanied a wild flower, 'I trust only in Heaven.' How beautiful is it in its loneliness! Scarce an eye meets it but that of the towering bird, as he dashes through the air above it, yet is it as full of lustre as the flowers we daily see and admire. Surely it should arrest the eye and the thoughts of the traveller as certainly as would a monument of human skill on such a spot. Like a lone ruin, it is a page of story, telling not only of the past, but the present, and reminding us of a Being who has reared it there, where it stands a memento of power and goodness." "Thanks to the human heart by which we live, Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears, To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." --WORDSWORTH. Of greater interest, however, because a native species, and more easily attained, is the _Castle Pink_, to which brief reference has already been made. Its perfume is like that of precious spices, and after a shower of rain, the air, for some distance, is actually interpenetrated with it. As its name indicates, it loves to grow upon the shattered walls of "Chiefless castles breathing stern farewells;" and it may be found, unless swept away by barbarous "improvements," adorning the gray old masonry of Sandown Castle, and on ruins in the neighbourhood of Norwich. On the walls of Rochester's stately keep it grows at a height which defies the spoiler's hand; and on the time-worn ruins of an ancient minster, it shines, in the summer-noon, "with a flush of flowers." It blossoms in July, and there are not, it is said, more than half-a-dozen spots in England where it may be found wild. [Illustration: FIG. 80.--"On the time-worn ruins of an ancient minster."] * * * * *