Ah! would we were now as content with simple joys as in the days when that wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower was to us a beauty, a prize, and a charm! [Illustration: FIG. 30.--"The Daisie scattered in each mead and down."] We wonder how many of our poets have done homage to the sweet and simple "nursling," or rather, whether by any _true_ poet it has been neglected. Cowper reminds us that in "The spring and play-time of the year" the village-wife and her little ones go forth to "Prank their hair with daisies." James Montgomery, whose admiration of nature is somewhat frigid, can yet remind us that-- "The rose has but a summer reign, The daisy never dies." Chaucer warms into enthusiasm when he thinks of its pastoral, innocent gracefulness ("simplex munditiis"):-- "So glad am I when in the Daisy's presence, That I am fain to do her reverence; For she of all sweet flowers is the flower With virtue filled, and honourable power; For ever fair alike, and fresh of hue, As well in winter as in summer new." Let us not omit a reference to quaint but genial William Browne:-- "The Daisie, scattered on each meade and down, A golden tuft within a silver crowne: Fair fall that dainty flower! and may there be No shepherd graced that does not honour thee!" Yes! let no poet be taken to your heart of hearts who has no love for the "flower white and rede,"--in French, called "La Belle Marguerite,"-- "The op'ning gowan, wet wi' dew," --Burns's "bonnie gem,"--the flower of the meadow and the lea, of the woodland and the vale. A modest, unassuming flower, destined to be trodden under the feet of the thoughtless, it withstands the rigorous breath of winter, is beautiful throughout the circle of the year--_Bellis perennis_, as the Swedish botanist not infelicitously called it. Its vegetation is arrested only during the harshest frosts; but it resumes its living growth as soon as it becomes sensible of the first rays of the spring-time sun. It is at the moment of nature's awakening, about "the solemn Easter-tide," that this "sweet nursling of the vernal year" displays all the simple coquettishness of its chaplet of flowers,--that chaplet which has also procured for it the name of the tiny "Marguerite,"--that is, "little pearl,"--a name which the French have adopted from the Latin--_Margarita_. Here let us pause, and propound a question. How would you propose to test the real character, the genuine nature, of friend or acquaintance?