These in flowers and men are more than seeming,
Workings are they of the selfsame powers,
Which the poet, in no idle dreaming,

Seeth in himself, and in the flowers.
Everywhere about us are they glowing,
Some like stars, to tell us Spring is born;
Others, their blue eyes with tear o'erflowing,
Stand like Ruth amid the golden corn;
Not alone in Spring's armorial bearing,
And in Summer's green-emblazon'd field,
But in arms of brave old Autumn's wearing,
In the centre of his brazen shield:
Not alone in meadows and green alleys,
On the mountain-top, and by the brink
Of sequester'd pools in woodland valleys,
Where the slaves of Nature stoop to drink;
Not alone in her vast dome of glory,

Not on graves of bird and beast alone,
But on old cathedrals, high and hoary,
On the tomb of heroes, carved in stone;

In the cottage of the rudest peasant,

In ancestral house, whose crumbling towers,
Speaking of the Past unto the Present,

Tell us of the ancient Games of Flowers;
In all places, then, and in all seasons,

Flowers expand their light and soul-like wings,
Teaching us, by most persuasive reasons,
How akin they are to human things.

And with child-like, credulous affection,
We behold their tender buds expand;

Emblems of our own great resurrection,
Emblems of the bright and better land.

LONGFELLOW.

Go, then, into the fields, when the snow melts and the earth is unbound Pry into the hedges for the first primrose: see if there be a daisy nestling ir the short grass; look for the little Celandine :

Ere a leaf is on the bush;

In the time before the thrush
Has a thought about its nest,
Thou wilt come with half a call,
Spreading out thy glossy breast
Like a careless prodigal;
Telling tales about the sun,

When we've little warmth, or none. WORDSWORTH.

The most imaginative and harmonious of poets has grouped the most charming of flowers around his "Sensitive plant:"

A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew,

And the young winds fed it with silver dew,
And it open'd its fan-like leaves to the light,
And closed them beneath the kisses of night.
And the Spring arose on the garden fair,
And the Spirit of Love fell everywhere;

And each flower and herb on earth's dark breast
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.

But none ever trembled and panted with bliss

In the garden, the field, or the wilderness,

Like a doe in the noontide with love's sweet want,
As the companionless Sensitive Plant.

The snowdrop, and then the violet,

Arose from the ground with warm rain wet,

And their breath was mix'd with fresh odour sent

From the turf, like the voice and the instrument.

Then the pied windflowers and tulip tall,
And narcissi, the fairest among them all,
Who gaze on their eyes in the stream's recess,
Till they die of their own dear loveliness.
And the Naiad-like lily of the vale,
Whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale,
That the light of its tremulous bells is seen
Through their pavilions of tender green;

And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue,
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew
Of music so delicate, soft, and intense,

It was felt like an odour within the sense;

And the rose like a nymph to the bath addrest,
Which unveil'd the depth of her glowing breast,
Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air
The soul of her beauty and love lay bare;
And the wand-like lily, which lifted up,
As a Mœnad, its moonlight-colour'd cup,

Till the fiery star, which is its eye,

Gazed through the clear dew on the tender sky;
And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberess,
The sweetest flower for scent that blows;
And all rare blossoms from every clime
Grew in that garden in perfect prime.

SHELLEY

The "Field Flowers" of the poet of "Hope” beautifully contrast with the 'Garden Flowers of Shelley :"

Ye field flowers! the gardens eclipse you, 'tis true,
Vet, wildings of Nature, I dote upon you,

For ye waft me to summers of old,

When the earth teem'd around me with fairy delight,
And when daisies and buttercups gladden'd my sight,
Like treasures of silver and gold.

I love you for lulling me back into dreams

Of the blue Highland mountains and echoing streams,
And of birchen glades breathing their balm,

While the deer was seen glancing in sunshine remote,
And the deep mellow crush of the wood-pigeon's note,
Made music that sweeten'd the calm.

Not a pastoral song has a pleasanter tune

Than ye speak to my heart, little wildings of June:
Of old ruinous castles ye tell,

Where I thought it delightful your beauties to find,
When the magic of Nature first breathed on my mind,
And your blossoms were part of her spell.

Even now what affections the violet awakes;
What loved little islands, twice seen in their lakes,
Can the wild water lily restore;

What landscapes I read in the primrose's looks,
And what pictures of pebbled and minnowy brooks
In the vetches that tangled the shore?

Earth's cultureless buds, to my heart ye were dear
Ere the fever of passion, or ague of fear,

Had scathed my existence's bloom;

Once I welcome you more, in life's passionless stage,
With the visions of youth to revisit my age,

And I wish you to grow on my tomb.

CAMPBELL.

We conclude with one of the most graceful poems of an age from which a

taste for the highest poetry was fast vanishing :

Go, lovely rose!

Tell her that wastes her time and me,

That now she knows

When I resemble her to thee,

In deserts, where no men abide,

Thou must have uncommended died.

How sweet and fair she seems to be. Small is the worth

The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee,

How small a part of time they share

That are so wondrous sweet and fair.

Instinct.

JOSEPH HENRY GREEN was one of the most distinguished surgeons and anatomists of the nineteenth century. In a course of Lectures delivered by him at the Royal College of Surgeons, and published in his work entitled "Vital Dynamics," he grappled with the difficult subject of Instinct in a manner at once original and conclusive. This passage of the Lecture is reprinted in the Appendix to Coleridge's " Aids to Reflection." Mr Green, born in 1791, was the son of a London merchant. He was a pupil of the famous Cline, and gradually made his way to the highest honours of his profession, having been twice president to the College of Surgeons. For seventeen years he was the intimate friend of Coleridge. Mr John Simon has written a most interesting memoir of the life of Mr Green, from which we may collect how high were those qualities which led Coleridge to make him trustee for his children, and to describe him in his will as "the man most intimate with their father's intel lectual labours and aspirations." Mr Green died in December 1863.]

What is instinct? As I am not quite of Bonnet's opinion, "that philosophers will in vain torment themselves to define instinct until they have spent some time in the head of the animal without actually being that animal," I shall endeavour to explain the use of the term. I shall not think it necessary to controvert the opinions which have been offered on this subject-whether the ancient doctrine of Descartes, who supposed that animals were mere machines; or the modern one of Lamarck, who attributes instincts to habits impressed upon the organs of animals by the constant efflux of the nervous fluid to these organs, to which it has been determined in their efforts to perform certain actions to which their necessities have given birth. And it will be here premature to offer any refutation of the opinions of those who contend for the identity of this faculty with reason, and maintain that all the actions of animals are the result of invention and experience;-

an opinion maintained with considerable plausibility by Dr Darwin.

Perhaps the most ready and certain mode of coming to a conclusion in this intricate inquiry will be by the apparently circuitous route of determining first what we do not mean by the word. Now we certainly do not mean, in the use of the term, any act of the vital power in the production or maintenance of an organ: nobody thinks of saying that the teeth grow by instinct, or that when the muscles are increased in vigour and size in consequence of exercise, it is from such a cause or principle. Neither do we attribute instinct to the direct functions of the organs in providing for the continuance and sustentation of the whole co-organised body. No one talks of the liver secreting bile, or the heart acting for the propulsion of the blood, by instinct. Some, indeed, have maintained that breathing, even voiding the excrement and urine, are instinctive operations; but surely these, as well as the former, are automatic, or at least are the necessary results of the organisation of the parts in and by which the actions are produced. These instances seem to be, if I may so say, below instinct. But, again, we do not attribute instinct to any actions preceded by a will con scious of its whole purpose, calculating its effects, and predetermining its consequences: nor to any exercise of the intellectual powers of which the whole scope, aim, and end are intellectual. In other terms, no man who values his words will talk of the instinct of a Howard, or of the instinctive operations of a Newton or Leibnitz, in those sublime efforts which ennoble and cast a lustre, not less on the individuals than on the whole human

race.

To what kind or mode of action shall we then look for the legitimate application of the term? In answer to this query we may, I think, without fear of consequence, put the following cases, as exemplifying and justifying the use of the term instinct in an appropriate sense. First, when there appears an action, not included either in the mere functions of life, acting within the sphere of its own organismus; nor yet an action attributable to the intelligent will or reason, yet at the same time not referable to any