But I shall say no more, lest my generous exertions should excite the ungrateful revenge of the insane, "fit pugil et medicum urget." My courage as well as my pen shrink from the task, else the sonnettomaniacs would have in me an historian equal to what the Abderites found in Lucian, or the Strasburghers in the chapter on Noses. Y. FIELD FLOWERS. THE love of wild flowers is often confounded with the love of botany. No two things can be more different: they are almost incompatible. The love of wild flowers is purely romantic, founded on hereditary reverence and old association. Children soon learn that violet and primrose are not common words; and men and women love them, from the mingled recollections of childhood and of poetry. Now botany is no respecter of prejudices or of persons. She is a hunter after novelty and truth, a dealer in hard names, a contemner of rank, a leveller, your only true jacobin. The rose is to her no better than the daisy. Besides, botany is a pursuit; the love of fieldflowers is a pleasure; one too that requires no trouble, but has all the enjoyment of gardening, without the toil of preparation, or the risk of disappointment. I have always had a passion for wild flowers. How I used to enjoy sitting, on a bright May morning, under a group of young trees, chiefly larch, horsechesnut, and the delicate weeping birch, just opposite a green bank, sloping to the south-west! That bank has passed into other hands; I can no longer call it mine; but I still have it before my eyes. It was the richest tapestry of flowers that I have ever seen; primroses, avens, orchises, wild strawberry-blossoms, pansies, and oxslips, joined and harmonized by wreaths of ground-ivy running amongst them like net-work; wild hyacinths, purple and white, fringing, as it were, the edge of this lovely carpet, and uniting it with the broom, the hawthorn, and the high elms that overhung the bank. What a pleasure it was to sit and read there, under the clear blue sky, listening to the nightingales and the wood-pigeons, which abounded near; never interrupted but by a fresher breath of air, or the sudden shadow of a dove, as she flew across the field. What a touchstone of poetry, to read it in that place. Nothing artificial would do there; nothing feverish; nothing morbid. The " Faery Queen," and the "Excursion," those fine out-of-door poems, seemed made for the spot; so did Mr. Knowles's " Virginius.' My bank was an object of despairing imitation to my dear friend Mary W. She would have a primrose-bank of her own. I shall never forget her labours, nor their result. She dug and planted, and watered and hoed; counted, with Chinese patience and accuracy, the number of my flowers; set down their position in a map; ravaged the hedgerows far and near; and at last contrived to get exactly the same plants in the same places. But it would not do. She was too ambitious. She rooted out all weeds but the select, and the select would die. She never could cover her ground. The last time I saw her primrosebank there were only three roots left, and they were withering; that was five months ago: I dare say, by this time, she has not one alive. What pretty flowers grow by the side of water! The little Veronica, called Forget-me-not, which is so like the turquoise, or the softest piece of the blue sky; and the lady's bedstraw, whose yellow cups and pale green leaves form such graceful natural wreaths, and twist so airily round a straw bonnet. In the water there is the white lily floating, like a swan; cool and pure as alabaster; regular, solid, and yet sharply defined, as a fine carving. The meadows are full of beautiful flowers. Two of the least common are the field tulip and the field star of Bethlehem. The field-tulip is very splendid. It resembles the garden tulip in figure, only smaller, and the head drooping like a snow-drop. O the beauty of that pendent head, with its small indented chequers of rich lilac (a rosy lilac) and deep purple (a crimson purple); dull and sad till the sun shines through, and then lighted up like stained glass in a cathedral window! There is a white variety of great elegance. The two sorts contrast well with each other, and with the deep orange clusters of the marsh marigold, which is often intermixed with them, but which generally edges away to the side of a running stream, as if enamoured of the bright reflection of her golden cups, broken into a thousand forms by the motion of the water. The field star of Bethlehem is the most ghost-like of flowers. It resembles a large hyacinth, the blossom almost green, the stalk almost white, with a strange shadowy mixture of tints, a ghastly uncertainty, a sepulchral paleness, a solid clayey visible coldness. Dr. Clarke found the field star of Bethlehem on a tumulus in the Troas, which is called the grave of Ajax. Never was any locality more appropriate. It is the flower of the grave. Not that this remarkable plant is livid or disgusting, like that, for instance, which children call dead men's fingers; on the contrary, it maintains a sort of ghostly purity and dignity. As far as a flower can be so, the field star of Bethlehem is awful. It is a rebuker of smiles; a living memento mori. It hints of death like a shroud. The happiest contrast to this melancholy plant is the periwinkle, the earliest and latest of flowers. From November to May I have seen the shining leaves and bright blue-bells bristling through the hedge rows, and have almost envied such cheerful hardiness-such a power of living and putting forth blossoms when all other vegetation lies dead or dormant. The periwinkle blooms without a rival. The song of the robin belongs to her, as that of the nightingale to the rose. Wood flowers are very interesting and various. The whole tribe of orchis, that singular frolic of nature; lilies of the valley, "whose very name is enough," and which are sometimes found in such rich abundance in cutting roads through an old coppice; the wood anemone, whose lightness and delicacy the common people express so well in calling it the wind-flower; and that lady of the forest, the peerless wood-sorrel. Nothing is so pretty as the wood-sorrel-nothing so elegant-drooping white blossoms veined with purple, and such leaves! Trefoils gracefully folded and dropping over the light stalk; the outside of a lucid green, the inside of a blushing crimson. It chooses such pretty situations too; springing, with a light elegance, from the dark mould, under low holly-bushes, or growing out of soft moss, between the fantastic roots of the beech-tree. Perhaps one part of the charm consists in its being altogether unhackneyed, unpraised in prose or verse. I never remember seeing the wood-sorrel mentioned, except by Mrs. Charlotte Smith, who had so fine a sense of the minute beauties of nature. Lord Byron's description of a lady's eye-lids resembles the blossom : "Those lids o'er which the violet vein After all, the commonest flowers are the most delightful. My greatest pleasure in flowering, is to find the first fresh bunch of primroses peeping out of some sheltered corner with their innocent happy look. M. POEMS OF MADAME DE SURVILLE. A COUNTRYMAN of the Poetess whose name stands at the head of this article, has said, that "Poetry is a diversion proper for women a dissembling and prating art, all pleasure and all show like themselves." This splenetic sentence is strangely compounded of truth and falsehood; and the world is now too well convinced of this to require any arguments from us on the subject. In fact, the womanly character is eminently poetical--more deeply sensible of all poetical emotion, more quickly alive to the language of all sympathy and sentiment, than that of man; and therefore more capable of relishing the delicate tenderness of the art. But, though there is generally this great appreciation of poetical excellence in the female mind, it is by no means a necessary consequence that the power of poetical conception should exist there: to admire and to create are widely different. We do not in this place presume to name all the various qualities which are necessary to constitute the poetical character in its highest excellence; but we think we may assert, that there are some of those qualities which seldom mingle in the female character-the deep and accurate insight into human nature and human passions, upon which alone a poet can build his noblest and truest fame. This knowledge, by education or by habit, is generally excluded from the heart of woman-from "the nunnery of her pure breast and quiet mind." In painting the milder affections of our nature, however, the poetesses of all ages have been eminently successful. Love, friendship, and filial affection, never wear a more beautiful garb than when ornamented by a female hand. It is not the province of woman to surmount the craggy mountain, and to delight in the terrors which she views from its brow, or to traverse the pathless ocean, and to rejoice in its dangerous sublimity; but it is her pleasant employ to walk amid beds of flowers, and there to gather the sweetest, the tenderest, and the most beautiful. There is something in the poetry of female writers, which speaks most earnestly from the heart, and which teaches us a mild and lovely wisdom. It does not terrify, but win to goodness-it is placid, affectionate, and earnest-hearted. Of female classical writers we have very few remains; but the age and spirit of chivalry gave a new place to the character of woman. On the revival of learning, she shared with man all the immunities of his intellectual dignity. The singular poems of Marguerite-Eleonore Clotilde de Vallon-Chalys, of which we believe but little is known, can scarcely be classed, even in character, amongst these; in language, expression, and imagery, they are totally distinct. Of the authenticity of these poems, we must confess, we have considerable doubts; but their merit and beauty we readily acknowledge. In 1804 a small volume was published at Paris, with the following title: "Poesies de Marguerite-Eleonore Clotilde de Vallon-Chalys, dépuis Madame de Surville, poëte Français du XV. siècle, publiées par Ch. Vanderbourg." In the preface to this little work there is some account given of the way in which these poems were discovered, and also of the author of them. In the year 1782, a M. de Surville, a descendant of this poetess, in searching among the neglected archives of his family, discovered some MS. poems, the beauty and excellence of which excited his astonishment and admiration. He applied himself diligently to the study of decyphering the hand-writing, and, with considerable trouble, he succeeded in transcribing the greater part of the MSS. M. de Surville was driven from France by the Revolution, and the originals of the poems were unfortunately consumed by fire. M. de Surville did not live to present to the public the monuments of his ancestor's genius, which had been preserved in his transcription; but in a letter to his wife, written shortly before his execution in the revolutionary tumults of the 7th year of the republic, he says, "I beseech you to communicate these poems to some one who is capable of appreciating them. Do not suffer the fruit of my researches to be lost to posterity, especially for the honour of my family, of which my brother is now the sole representative." Of the existence even of M. de Surville, we know not whether we ought to doubt, though an accurate memoir is given of him, and an anecdote related of a duel between him and the commander of an English vessel, of the name of Middleton, respecting the relative merits of the two nations. The editor of the poems informs us, that, in the year 1794, (but by what means he does not tell us) he was favoured with a sight of M. de Surville's copy, and that afterwards, on his return to France from abroad, he succeeded, with much difficulty, in discovering it. But besides these poems, some MSS. of M. de Surville fell into his hands, containing accounts of several poetesses in the age of the Troubadours, and also a memoir of the writer of these singular poems, of which, as it is rather an interesting piece of biography, we shall give a slight sketch. Marguerite-Eleonore Clotilde de Vallon-Chalys, afterwards Madame de Surville, was born in a beautiful chateau on the left bank of the Ardêche, about the year 1405. Her mother, Pulcherie de Fay-Collan, passed some years in Paris, where she acquired a taste for literature, and learned to write a beautiful hand-no mean accomplishment at that day. She was invited by Agnes of Navarre, the wife of Gaston-Phebus, Count de Foix, to the court of that prince, which was enriched by a valuable library, not only of classical MSS. but also of such of the Italian and French writers as were then extant. Under the direction of Froissard, and by the desire of the Countess, Pulcherie copied some of the works of the Trouveurs, and more especially of those poetesses who, after Heloise de Fulbert, had cultivated the French, or romance language. This valuable collection, both of ancient and modern poetry, on the death of her benefactress, Pulcherie was allowed by the Count to carry away with her. Peculiar misfortunes separated Madame de Vallon, for some time, from her husband and her sons; and on her return to Vallon, her great consolation was in the education of her daughter Clotilde. The talents of this child were very precocious. At eleven years of age she translated into French verse one of the Odes of Petrarch, with considerable ability. Many circumstances concurred to develope the genius of Clotilde. A strict friendship |