A fragrance beyond any thing I had ever known came suddenly upon the air, and interrupted my meditation. I looked around me, but saw no flower from which it could proceed. There is no word for it; _exquisite_ and _delicious_ have lost all meaning now. It was of a full and penetrating sweetness, too keen and delicate to be cloying. Unable to trace it, I rode on, but the remembrance of it pursued me. I had a feeling that I must forever regret my loss, my want, if I did not return and find the poet of the lake, whose voice was such perfume. In earlier days, I might have disregarded such a feeling; but now I have learned to prize the monitions of my nature as they deserve, and learn sometimes what is not for sale in the market place. So I turned back, and rode to and fro, at the risk of abandoning the object of my ride. I found her at last, the queen of the south, singing to herself in her lonely bower. Such should a sovereign be, most regal when alone; for then there is no disturbance to prevent the full consciousness of power. All occasions limit; a kingdom is but an occasion; and no sun ever saw itself adequately reflected on sea or land. Nothing at the south had affected me like the magnolia. Sickness and sorrow, which have separated me from my kind, have requited my loss by making known to me the loveliest dialect of the divine language. "Flowers," it has been truly said, "are the only positive present made us by nature." Man has not been ungrateful, but consecrated the gift to adorn the darkest and brightest hours. If it is ever perverted, it is to be used as a medicine; and even this vexes me. But no matter for that. We have pure intercourse with these purest creations; we love them for their own sake, for their beauty's sake. As we grow beautiful and pure, we understand them better. With me knowledge of them is a circumstance, a habit of my life, rather than a merit. I have lived with them, and with them almost alone, till I have learned to interpret the slightest signs by which they manifest their fair thoughts. There is not a flower in my native region which has not for me a tale, to which every year is adding new incidents; yet the growths of this new climate brought me new and sweet emotions, and, above all others, was the magnolia a revelation. When I first beheld her, a stately tower of verdure, each cup, an imperial vestal, full-displayed to the eye of day, yet guarded from the too hasty touch even of the wind by its graceful decorums of firm, glistening, broad, green leaves, I stood astonished, as might a lover of music, who, after hearing in all his youth only the harp or the bugle, should be saluted, on entering some vast cathedral, by the full peal of its organ.