The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 12, No. 337, October 25, 1828Various
General
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 12, No. 337, October 25, 1828
Various
Popular literature -- Great Britain -- Periodicals
When summer's delightful season arrives, rarely in this country too warm
to be enjoyed throughout the day in the open air, there is nothing more
grateful than a profusion of choice flowers around and within our
dwellings. The humblest apartments ornamented with these beautiful
productions of nature have, in my view, a more delightful effect than
the proudest saloons with gilded ceilings and hangings of Genoa velvet.
The richness of the latter, indeed, would be heightened, and their
elegance increased, by the judicious introduction of flowers and foliage
into them. The odour of flowers, the cool appearance of the dark green
leaves of some species, and the beautiful tints and varied forms of
others, are singularly grateful to the sight, and refreshing at the same
time. Vases of Etruscan mould, containing plants of the commonest kind,
offer those lines of beauty which the eye delights in following; and
variform leaves hanging festooned over them, and shading them if they be
of a light colour, with a soft grateful hue, add much to their pleasing
effect. These decorations are simple and cheap.
Lord Bacon, whose magnificence of mind exempts him from every objection
as a model for the rest of mankind, (in all but the unfortunate error to
which, perhaps, his sordid pursuit in life led him, to the degradation
of his nobler intellect), was enthusiastically attached to flowers, and
kept a succession of them about him in his study and at his table. Now
the union of books and flowers is more particularly agreeable. Nothing,
in my view, is half so delightful as a library set off with these
beautiful productions of the earth during summer, or indeed, any other
season of the year. A library or study, opening on green turf, and
having the view of a distant rugged country, with a peep at the ocean
between hills, a small fertile space forming the nearest ground, and an
easy chair and books, is just as much of local enjoyment as a thinking
man can desire--I reck not if under a thatched or slated roof, to me it
is the same thing. A favourite author on my table, in the midst of my
bouquets, and I speedily forget how the rest of the world wags. I fancy
I am enjoying nature and art together, a consummation of luxury that
never palls upon the appetite--a dessert of uncloying sweets.
Madame Roland seems to have felt very strongly the union of mental
pleasure with that afforded to the senses by flowers. She somewhere
says, "La vûe d'une fleur carresse mon imagination et flatte mes sens à
un point inexprimable; elle réveille avec volupté le sentiment de mon
existence. Sous le tranquil abri du toit paternel, j'étois heureuse des
enfance avec des fleurs et des livres; dans l'étroite enciente d'une
prison, au milieu des fers imposés par la tyrannie la plus revoltante,
j'oublie l'injustice des hommes, leurs sottises, et mes maux, avec des
livres et des fleurs." These pleasures, however, are too simple to be
universally felt.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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