Page:The Romance of Nature; or, The Flower-Seasons Illustrated.djvu/378

244 and receiving admiration as a right; the other, gentle, unaffected, humble, and blessed with all the unobtrusive loveliness of simplicity and innocence. Every Flower may be so read; nor is the study an idle or unprofitable one, for it induces us to read, that God-written book, open to every eye, creed, and comprehension—that universal language, in which the addresses his creatures—that eternal and exhaustless source of knowledge, devotion, and enjoyment, whose study is a labour of love, which no adverse circumstances can wholly interrupt.

The showy and magnificent flower of the large occupies the chief place in the following plate, and both the grand outline of its fine form, and its very brilliant colour, deserve our admiration. The great length of the filaments, and their elegant shape, with their dark powdery anthers, add a remarkable feature to this superb flower, which is more beautifully spotted than any other of its tribe, and each mark being raised from the surface of the curved petal in a kind of bas-relief gives it a singularly rich appearance.

The, whose modest tint of lilac is a striking contrast to the splendid Lily, is now one of our wild flowers. It is supposed to have been brought originally from the East, where its bulbous roots are in high esteem as eatables. It was introduced into England by Sir Thomas Smith in the reign of Edward the Third, and first planted at Walden in Essex, which, from the quantity of saffron