Page:The Romance of Nature; or, The Flower-Seasons Illustrated.djvu/384

250 the Wooddy Nightshade, with its treacherous berries looking lusciously crimson and juicy. The illustrative poem being "a fact, literally rendered," I need give no prose description of the same scene. The Blackberries, Haws, Hips, and the clustered Nightshade berries are represented in the plate.

Here must end my third and last sociable gossip—for such these chapters seem to me, rather than formal deeds of authorship, and such I would fain have them appear to my readers. My book cannot play the part of a literary and scientific omnibus, and transport its friends at once into the Fairy-realm of Nature's Romance; but if it only serves as an humble finger-post on the road, pointing towards the clime its author loves so well, her effort will not have been a vain one, nor unproductive of some degree of good to her fellow sojourners in this proverbially "matter of fact" world. We have abundance of books published for the purpose of making us wiser: My ambition would be, that mankind—in which woman-kind is ever prominently ranked—should be made happier by some fortunate work of mine:—and if by any added associations of thought or fancy, I have in these pages enhanced the pleasure with which one person contemplates a flower, "e'en though the meanest bud that bears the name,"—I shall have attained a step nearer to my object.