BY J.B. SYME.

It was our fortune to be born in the country—far away, at the foot of one of the blue hills of Scotland—in a quaint old fashioned little house—in a quiet little village that seemed shrunken and grey, and grim, and decrepid with age. The drooping ashes, the solemn oaks, and the shady plane-trees, spread their long arms tenderly over the straw-thatched roofs of this lowly hamlet, as if to defend it from the burning sun and reckless storms; and the Ayrshire rose and ivy crept up and clung to its damp and crumbling walls. In the broken parts of the gables, and in the crevices of the ruined chimneys, the dew-fed wall-flower grew in poverty and beauty, and shook the incense from its waving flowers into the bosom of summer. The bearded moss clustered like a thousand little brown pin-cushions upon the old thatch, and older stones; and sometimes the polyanthus and primrose, planted beside it by some child who loved to look at flowers, would close their eyes and lay their dewy checks upon the moss's breast at evening.

The only links that connected the simple, primitive people of this little hamlet, with the purely ideal was their flowers. They did not know about the participle mysteries that science has discovered in those beautiful children of God, the flowers. They could not, like the poor pariahs to whom the proud Hindoos of India will not speak, converse poetic stories with those daughters of spring and summer; yet, they saw something in their flowers beyond the visible and lowly circumstances of their own every-day life—something that lifted their eyes from the ground to heaven. The marigold, that star of the earth, with its bright, yellow petals, reminded them of the golden stars of heaven; the daisy, with its pure white blossom, bathed in the dew and sunlight of smiling morning, recalled to their minds the stories they had heard in their childhood about the diadems of fairies; and the blue forget-me-nots seemed to twinkle like the blue eyes of the angels. And when winter came, and the fair summer flowers faded away; moralizings on life, on death and eternity, came sighing in their expiring exhalations, over that simple people's souls. It was from being taught, in this way, to love the flowers of the country, that I Cultivated sympathies which pre-disposed me to love city flowers.

When I was first transplanted from my own green, native valley, into the heart of a great city; when my early home was levelled to the ground, and when its flowers were withered, never to bloom any more, I felt as if I had come amongst grim walls to wither too, and had been uprooted from the light and life of my youth that I might die. The birds that wailed around me in their prison cages, seemed to weep for the hawthorn and alder trees that were growing beside the ruins of my old home, and I wept with them, for I, too, was sighing for nature.

As I became familiar with the lanes, and streets, and byways of the city, I began at last to find, that there were flowers, too—flowers beautiful as the roses in the gardens of paradise, and bright as the smile of Abel when he worshipped his God. Day by day, in my little walks, I passed a large square encompassed by a low wall and lofty iron railing, in which several hundreds of boys and girls with rosy cheeks and light hearts, sported, and sang like fairies holding festival. Here were faces lovelier than roses; lips brighter than ripe cherries, and eyes purer than dew; from the day I first beheld those flowers of the city, I ceased to sigh for the country and its flowers. I used to stand and gaze at them with grateful delight, and live over again my own childhood's hours, as I watched their childhood's sports. By and by I knew and became known to several of those children; I gave them kind words, and they returned me beautiful smiles.

There was amongst that host of children one little boy whose face was very fair; whose eyes were very bright, and whose little feet made merry music on the smooth pavement. Girls have a strong intuitive love of the beautiful, and Johnny with his liquid eyes, and dimpled cheeks, and floating ringlets of gold was the favorite of all the girls at school, often wished that I had roses to place upon his brow, and the waters of paradise to sprinkle on his cheeks, that I might preserve their bloom forever. But, alas! city flowers droop and fade and die; and though tears fall, like Hermon's dews, upon the cold green earth where they are sleeping, it will not renew their blooming, nor bring them back from the grave.

I looked amongst the tiny throng one day, and Johnny was not there—I came again and again, and still he was not there. "He has gone away," said I, "to gladden his grandmother's bosom—his grandmother, who doubtless lives far away in some little cottage in the country. He will soon come back again."

And he did come back again, for on a lovely summer day, when the birds and butterflies and children were sporting in the sun, I saw him seated in a little chair, amidst his young companions.

"Shall I soon get well again, to play with them?" said he, lifting his pale face and sad eyes towards his mother's.

"Yes," said his mother, with a sad smile and a deep sigh, "you will soon get well again, Johnny."

Alas no, fond mother; the bloom has gone from his cheek forever, the beauty from his form. Henceforth, if he lives, the thoughtless will laugh at him, as he moves painfully about the streets—the wicked will mock him. In thy heart only, and in the bowers of paradise, shall he now, henceforth and forever live and bloom. Slowly and sadly I saw his pale cheek grow paler, and the lustre fade away from his eyes.

Time wore away, and this stricken flower of the city faded away with it. He could no longer sit and look upon his former playmates; the airs of Autumn were too cool at last for his sensitive, thin, pale, transparent cheek.

I was walking one day, in a pensive mood, along a crowded thoroughfare, where active men jostled each other in the pursuit of business. There was life and hope in their eyes, and vigor in their limbs. It is not on the streets that one is likely to meet the blighted flowers of the city—the drooping and the dying do not wither away there. Within the chambers of silent and sorrowful homes they breathe out their lives, and fade away.

As I walked along, gazing at the tall grim buildings and dark alleys, that were so full of old, historical memories, I was suddenly recalled from a reverie, by a feeble cry; and turning quickly round I saw, in the arms of a robust and rosy lad, the wasted, corpse-like form of my little friend. I do not know how I recognized him. It was by an intuition of the soul, for not a feature that his countenance bore in his healthful days, was visible.

I took his trembling little hand in mine, and shaking my head to clear the moisture from my eyes, said I, attempting to smile—"How are you?"

"Quite well," said the dying infant, and he, too, smiled.

I knew that it was an angel that lighted up that smile—that it was the immortal spirit, rising in sublime resignation above the vanity of health and earthly beauty, that beamed in his blighted face.

"I cannot walk now," said Johnny, in a soft, low voice, that his panting chest could scarcely articulate.

I could not speak—and, continued the boy, with a little sigh, and in tremulous tones—"My mother is dead."—But thy Father, from whom the purest and holiest things and thoughts have their being—the Source of all light and life and beauty and goodness, lives to thee Johnny, said I in my heart. Poor little blighted city flower, thought I, as I looked at him through my tears—immortal flower of humanity—purer and lovelier now in thy pain and resignation than when thy cheeks were rosy, and thy laugh was like a song-bird's music; thou shall soon be transplanted to a land where no sorrows, sighs, and pains are known; thy little feeble frame will moulder away beneath the daisy and the weeping snow-drop, but thy purified soul shall bloom in everlasting glory, in the bosom of God.

Oh! you who are strong and full of life, speak gently to the fragile, drooping, blighted flowers of cities, and do not scorn them. They once were beautiful; and now they only linger sadly here, with no mother to cherish them. Kind words and gentle looks are everlasting sunshine to city flowers.

Around the throne of God are white-winged cherubim, whose countenances are purer than transparent snow, and whose voices are sweeter than that of the angel Azazil, who leads the choir of the daughters of Paradise. Those are the souls of little children, who have suffered in their bodies and in their affections, and who have yet complained not. The soul of little Johnny blooms brightly amongst those celestial spirits—a flower of heaven.