they have become not less enthusiastic than expert in the cultivation of flowers. Scarce European plants command higher prices at Pekin than could be obtained for any Chinese production in London. But we have rambled and preluded till the shower is over, and we may now again venture out into the garden. This Fig-tree suggests the passing remark, that although the sexual system of plants owes its establishment chiefly to Linnæus, the fact was well known to the ancients. The Date-Palm, in all ages a primary object of cultivation, bears barren and fertile flowers upon separate trees; and the Greeks soon discovered, that to have abundant and well-flavoured fruit, it was expedient to plant both together. Without this arrangement dates have no kernel, and are not good fruit. In the Levant the same process is practised on the Pistacia and fig. This gall which has fallen from our young oak is a tumour or a disease in the tree, and will ultimately become animated with myriads of insects. Galls for making ink are the oak-apples of a Levant Quercus, different from any of ours. Yonder is the Holly, from whose bark the treacherous bird-lime is prepared. Poets have bewailed the hard fate of the eagle, whose wing had furnished the plume of the arrow by which he was shot-why have they not melodized in verse the perfidious treatment of linnets and robins, whose natural perch is thus converted into a snare to rob them of their life and liberty? In passing this Vine, so fertile in all pleasant and hilarious associations, we may record that Dr. Hales, by affixing tubes to the stump of one which he had cut off in April, found that the sap rose twenty-one feet high; whence we may form some

notion of the moisture which these plants absorb from the earth, and brew into wine, in their minute vessels, for the recreation and delight of man. The village-clock striking the hour of eleven, reminds me of one remarkable circumstance which I might otherwise have omitted to notice that it is a number totally unknown in botany, no plant, tree, shrub, or flower, having yet been discovered in which the corolla has eleven males. The prevalence of the Polyandrian system among plants is attested by the singular fact, that out of 11,500 species of plants enumerated in the first thirteen classes of the Cambridge collection, there is not one, bearing barren and fertile flowers, in which the females exceed the males.

"In the royal ordering of gardens," says Bacon, "there ought to be a garden for every month in the year;" by the adoption of which recommendation, even in private pleasure-grounds, we might secure to ourselves the enjoyment of a perpetual bloom, placing ourselves, as it were, beneath the cornucopia of Flora to be crowned with a perennial garland. Even when the evergreens in the depth of winter refute their own name, and present nothing to the eye but waving tufts of snow, we may perpetuate the summer landscape by turning our glance inward, and recalling the floweryness and green overgrowth of the past season:—or in the midst of leafless shrubs and trees, whose fleshless bones are wrapped in snow, like skeletons in their winding sheets, we may call around us all their verdant glories by anticipating the garniture of the following spring, in the manner of which Cowper has afforded so beautiful an example :—

These naked shoots,

Barren as lances, among which the wind
Makes wintry music, sighing as it goes,
Shall put their graceful foliage on again,

And more aspiring, and with ampler spread,

Shall boast new charms, and more than they have lost. Then each in its peculiar honours clad,

Shall publish even to the distant eye

Its family and tribe. Laburnum, rich
In streaming gold; syringa, ivory pure;
The scentless and the scented rose; this red,
And of a humbler growth, the other tall,
And throwing up into the darkest gloom
Of neighbouring cypress, or more sable yew,
Her silver globes, light as the foamy surf
That the wind severs from the broken wave:-
The lilac, various in array, now white,

Now sanguine, and her beauteous head now set

With purple spikes pyramidal, as if

Studious of ornament, yet unresolved

Which hue she most approved, she chose them all ;—
Copious of flowers the woodbine, pale and wan,
But well compensating her sickly looks
With never-cloying odours, early and late;—
Hypericum all bloom, so thick a swarm
Of flowers, like flies clothing her slender rods,
That scarce a leaf appears ;—mezerion too,
Though leafless, well attired, and thick beset
With blushing wreaths, investing every spray ;-
Althea with the purple eye: the broom
Yellow and bright, as bullion unalloy'd
Her blossoms; and luxuriant above all

The jasmine, throwing wide her elegant sweets,
The deep dark-green of whose unvarnish'd leaf
Makes more conspicuous, and illumines more
The bright profusion of her scatter'd stars."

CORONATION EXTRAORDINARY.

I HAVE seen the Coronation, and never did I witness a sight so magnificent-so august—so sublime. If ever the exclamation of "hæc olim meminisse juvabit" can be applicable, it must be to a spectacle like this, which, by eclipsing the future as well as the past, has condensed the wonders of a whole life in one absorbing moment, and given me reason to be thankful that my existence was made contemporaneous with such a surpassing display of glory and splendour. So far from seeking to aggrandize what I have seen, even if that were possible, by any inflation of language, I have purposely abstained, during several days, from any attempt at description, in order that some portion of my enthusiasm might be suffered to evaporate; and yet, even now, I feel the necessity of perpetually keeping my pen below the level of my feelings, lest I should be suspected of intemperate exaggeration. In all sincerity of heart I may say, that I unaffectedly pity those who, from any inexcusable considerations of interest, or the more justifiable causes of compulsory absence, have been debarred from sharing. the intense gratification which I have experienced. Exhibitions of this nature are rare, and a concurrence of circumstances united to give interest and magnificence to the present, which may never be again combined. The previous night, by its serene splendour, seemed anxious to do honour to the approaching gorgeousness. One would have thought that it was a court-day in heaven, and that all its nobility was present, sparkling in their stars, and coronets, and girdles of light; while imagina

tion easily converted the milky way into a cluster of radiant courtiers gathering around the throne from which their splendours were derived. Morning began to dawn with a calm loveliness, which rather confirmed than dissipated these floating delusions of the mind. From the gallery where I had procured a seat, I saw the stars gradually "gin to pale their ineffectual fires," until none remained visible but Dian's crescent, slowly changing its hue from gold to silver, and the sparkling son of Jupiter and Aurora, Lucifer, who, by his reluctant twinklings, seemed struggling for a little longer existence, that he might catch one glimpse of the approaching magnificence. Already were the eastern skies steeped in a faint grey light, interspersed with streaks of pale green, while fresh flushes of a rosier hue came every moment flooding up from beneath the horizon, and a breeze, sent forward as the herald of the sun, presently wafted round me such a gush of crimson radiance, that I felt (to use the only poetical expression of Sternhold and Hopkins) as if the morning "on the wings of wind came flying all abroad." exclaimed,

"the jocund day

Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain's top;"

Behold, I

and I was endeavouring to recollect Tasso's beautiful description of sunrise, when the increasing charms of the daybreak compelled me to concentrate all my faculties in the contemplation of the scene with which I was surrounded.

The gallery where I had taken my station was a terrace which overhangs the Lake of Chêde, opposite to