"Then herbs of every leaf, that sudden flow'r'd Op'ning their various colours, and made gay Her bosom smelling sweet; and, these scarce blown, Forth flourish'd thick the clust'ring vine, forth crept {209} The swelling gourd, up stood the corny reed Embattel'd in her field; and th' _humble shrub,_ _And bush with frizzled hair implicit_: last Rose, as in dance, the stately trees, and spread Their branches hung with copious fruits, or gemm'd Their blossoms; with high woods the hills were crown'd; With tufts the valleys and each fountain side; With borders long the rivers." Only to learn, and be made to understand, these twelve lines thoroughly would teach a youth more of true botany than an entire Cyclopaedia of modern nomenclature and description: they are, like all Milton's work, perfect in accuracy of epithet, while consummate in concentration. Exquisite in touch, as infinite in breadth, they gather into their unbroken clause of melodious compass the conception at once of the Columbian prairie, the English cornfield, the Syrian vineyard, and the Indian grove. But even Milton has left untold, and for the instant perhaps unthought of, the most solemn difference of rank between the low and lofty trees, not in magnitude only, nor in grace, but in duration. 8. Yet let us pause before passing to this greater subject, to dwell more closely on what he has told us so clearly,--the difference in Grace, namely, between the trees that rise 'as in dance,' and 'the bush with frizzled hair.' For the bush form is essentially one taken by vegetation in some kind of distress; scorched by heat, discouraged by darkness, or bitten by frost; it is the form in which isolated knots of earnest plant life stay {210} the flux of fiery sands, bind the rents of tottering crags, purge the stagnant air of cave or chasm, and fringe with sudden hues of unhoped spring the Arctic edge of retreating desolation. On the other hand, the trees which, as in sacred dance, make the borders of the rivers glad with their procession, and the mountain ridges statelier with their pride, are all expressions of the vegetative power in its accomplished felicities; gathering themselves into graceful companionship with the fairest arts and serenest life of man; and providing not only the sustenance and the instruments, but also the lessons and the delights, of that life, in perfectness of order, and unblighted fruition of season and time. 9. 'Interitura'--yet these not to-day, nor to-morrow, nor with the decline of the summer's sun. We describe a plant as small or great; and think we have given account enough of its nature and being. But the chief question for the plant, as for the human creature, is the Number of its days; for to the tree, as to its master, the words are forever true--"As thy Day is, so shall thy Strength be."