THE GARLAND. THE USE OF FLOWERS. GOD might have made the earth bring forth Enough for great and small, The Oak tree and the Cedar tree, Without a flower at all. He might have made enough, enough For every want of ours: For luxury, medicine, and toil, And yet have made no flowers. The clouds might give abundant rain, And the herb that keepeth the life in man, Then wherefore, wherefore were they made, And dyed with rainbow light, All fashioned with supremest grace, Upspringing day and night; Springing in valleys green and low, And in the silent wilderness Where no man passes by? Our outward life requires them not, To beautify the earth: To comfort man—to whisper hope For whoso careth for the flowers, Will much more care for Him THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. BY MRS. ABDY. "As the diamond excels every jewel we find, So truth is the one peerless gem of the mind." A NEW tragedy was about to be brought forth at the Haymarket Theatre. Report spoke loudly of its merits, and report touched closely on the name of its author. Either Talbot or Stratford must have written it; those regular attendants at rehearsal, who seemed equally interested in every situation, equally at home in every point, throughout the piece. Some said that it was a Beaumont and Fletcher concern, in which both parties were equally implicated; and this conjecture did not appear improbable, for the young men in question were indeed united together in bonds of more than ordinary friendship. They had been schoolfellows and brother collegians; each was in the enjoyment of an easy independence; and their tastes, pursuits, and ways of living were very similar. So congenial, indeed, were they in taste, that they had both fixed their preference on the same lady. Adelaide Linley was an accomplished and pretty heiress, who, fortunately for them, was the ward of Mr. Grayson, an eminent solicitor, with whom they had recently renewed an early acquaintance. Rivalry, however, failed of its usual effect in their case; it created no dissension between them; indeed, the manner of Adelaide was very far removed from coquetry, and although it was evident that she preferred the friends to the rest of her wooers, she showed to neither of them evidence of any feeling beyond those of friendship and good will. The night of the tragedy arrived. Mr. and Mrs. Grayson, their ward, and two or three of her " WOOers" were in attendance before the rising of the curtain; they were just as ignorant as other people touching the precise identity of the dramatist about to encounter the awful fiat of the public. Talbot and Stratford were sheltered in the deep recesses of a private box; had they been in a public one, nobody could have doubted which was the hero of the evening. Talbot's flushed cheek, eager eye, and nervous restlessness plainly indicated that the tragedy was not written on the Beaumont and Fletcher plan, but that it owed its existence entirely to himself. |