2. But created, observe, by the purity and order, more than by the function. The flower exists for its own sake,--not for the fruit's sake. The production of the fruit is an added honour to it--is a granted consolation to us for its death. But the flower is the end of the seed,--not the seed of the flower. You are fond of cherries, perhaps; and think that the use of cherry blossom is to produce cherries. Not at all. The use of cherries is to produce cherry blossoms; just as the use of bulbs is to produce hyacinths,--not of hyacinths to produce bulbs. Nay, that the flower can multiply by bulb, or root, or slip, as well as by seed, may show you at once how immaterial the seed-forming function is to the flower's existence. A flower is to the vegetable substance what a crystal is to the mineral. "Dust of sapphire," writes my friend Dr. John Brown to me, of the wood hyacinths of Scotland in the spring. Yes, that is so,--each bud more beautiful, itself, than perfectest jewel--_this_, indeed, jewel "of purest ray serene;" but, observe you, the glory is in the purity, the serenity, the radiance,--not in the mere continuance of the creature. 3. It is because of its beauty that its continuance is worth Heaven's while. The glory of it is in being,--not in begetting; and in the spirit and substance,--not the change. For the earth also has its flesh and spirit. Every day of spring is the earth's Whit Sunday--Fire {66} Sunday. The falling fire of the rainbow, with the order of its zones, and the gladness of its covenant,--you may eat of it, like Esdras; but you feed upon it only that you may see it. Do you think that flowers were born to nourish the blind? Fasten well in your mind, then, the conception of order, and purity, as the essence of the flower's being, no less than of the crystal's. A ruby is not made bright to scatter round it child-rubies; nor a flower, but in collateral and added honour, to give birth to other flowers. Two main facts, then, you have to study in every flower: the symmetry or order of it, and the perfection of its substance; first, the manner in which the leaves are placed for beauty of form; then the spinning and weaving and blanching of their tissue, for the reception of purest colour, or refining to richest surface.