When all this uniform uncoloured scene Shall be dismantled of its fleecy load, And flush into variety again. From dearth to plenty, and from death to life, Is Nature’s progress, when she lectures man In heavenly truth; evincing, as she makes The grand transition, that there lives and works A soul in all things, and that soul is God. He sets the bright procession on its way, And marshals all the order of the year; He marks the bounds which winter may not pass, And blunts his pointed fury; in its case, Russet and rude, folds up the tender germ, Uninjured, with inimitable art; And ere one flowery season fades and dies, Designs the blooming wonders of the next. “Buds possess a power analogous to that of seeds, and have been called the viviparous offspring of vegetables, inasmuch as they admit of a removal from their original connection, and, its action being suspended for an indefinite time, can be renewed at pleasure.” _On Icicles, by Cowper._ The mill-dam dashes on the restless wheel, And wantons in the pebbly gulf below No frost can bind it there; its utmost force Can but arrest the light and smoky mist, That in its fall the liquid sheet throws wide. And see where it has hung th’ embroidered banks With forms so various, that no powers of art, The pencil, or the pen, may trace the scene! Here glittering turrets rise, upbearing high (Fantastic misarrangement!) on the roof Large growth of what may seem the sparkling trees And shrubs of fairy land. The crystal drops That trickle down the branches, fast congealed, Shoot into pillars of pellucid length, And prop the pile they but adorned before. * * * * * FLORAL DIRECTORY. Earth Moss. _Phascum cuspidatum._ Dedicated to _St. Chrysostom._ ~January 28.~ _St. Agnes._--Second Commemoration. _St. Cyril_, A. D. 444. _Sts. Thyrsus, Leucius, and Callinicus._ _St. John of Reomay_, A. D. 540. Blessed _Margaret_, Princess of Hungary, A. D. 1271. _St. Paulinus_, A. D. 804. Blessed _Charlemagne_, Emperor, A. D. 814. _St. Glastian_, of Fife, A. D. 830. _St. Thyrsus._ Several churches in Spain are dedicated to him. In 777, the queen of Oviedo and Asturia presented one of them with a silver chalice and paten, a wash-hand basin and a pipe, which, according to Butler, is “a silver pipe, or quill to suck up the blood of Christ at the communion, such as the pope sometimes uses--it sucks up as a nose draws up air.” CHRONOLOGY.