Page:The Romance of Nature; or, The Flower-Seasons Illustrated.djvu/230

132 To be flung off and uncreated by

The first glad smiles of Spring-like sunniness.

Mountains, those perpetual thrones of sublimity and grandeur, acquire new beauty in this splendid season—the noon of the year. The rare plants peculiar to their rugged heights are mostly in bloom, and the wild thyme and the heather spread over waste and moorland their treasures of purple and crimson flowers,—making glad many a solitary place, and cheering the wanderer as he climbs crag above crag, till, from the crest of some mighty rock, he gains a scene of glory that were reward sufficient for thrice the labour he has spent. Perhaps his gaze is on one of the many spots of which England loves to boast, and justly too, that even the fabled happy Vale of Rasselas would suffer by comparison. Often such a scene gains added beauty from some stupendous work of other days, Castle, or Abbey's grey monastic pile; and how many thoughts do these mouldering remnants suggest? How strangely beautiful it is to see flowers of the gayest hues dancing in the light breeze, and flinging round their young perfume over the lingering death-bed of a thing of centuries!—The Wallflower, the Clove Pink, and the Snap-dragon, especially, may be seen growing in the most luxuriant profusion amid such spots, and literally making a garden of a grave. Daisies and Buttercups grow in the mouldered stone of the windows—Nettles spring on the sides of the crumbling buttress, and trees may often be seen waving their long arms from tower and donjon, as if in mockery of