Page:The Wild Garden William Robinson.djvu/24

8 and Cinquefoils, and Evening Primroses, and Clematises, and Honeysuckles, and Michaelmas Daisies, and Feverfews, and Wood-hyacinths, and Daffodils, and Bindweeds, and Forget-me-nots, and sweet blue Omphalodes, and Primroses, and Day Lilies, and Asphodels, and St. Bruno’s Lilies, and the almost innumerable plants which form the flora of regions where, though life is yet rife on every inch of ground, and we are enjoying the verdure and the temperature of our lowland meadows, there is a "sense of a great power beginning to be manifested in the earth, and of a deep and majestic concord in the rise of the long low lines of piny hills; the first utterances of those mighty mountain symphonies, soon to be more loudly lifted and wildly broken along the battlements of the Alps. But their strength is as yet restrained, and the far-reaching ridges of pastoral mountains succeed each other, like the long and sighing swell which moves over quiet waters, from some far-off stormy sea. And there is a deep tenderness pervading that vast monotony. The destructive forces, and the stern expression of the central ranges, are alike withdrawn. No frost-ploughed, dust-encumbered paths of the ancient glacier fret the soft Jura pastures; no splintered heaps of ruin break the fair