IN these latter days of the year, so full of melancholy, it occurs to me that we do not altogether die when we shuffle off this mortal coil. Is not physical death only a change to vegetable birth? We are born, we mature, flourish, and decay, and are laid away in the mould, only to reappear in the flower, the shrub, and the tree. That little child whom you buried when the leaves were falling, as you weep over its grave, in the bright springtime, when the leaves are repeating the miracle of the new creation, may look at you out of the golden petals of the dandelion and the butter-cup. There may be remembrance for you in the leaves of the shrub at the headstone, as they are ruffled by the breeze. There may be the souvenir of a familiar smile in the tremor of a daisy.

The generations of men come and go, but their life is not all gone. Life does not cease to exist. It is eternal in its revolutions, its changes, and its new forms. Down under the sod this active principle of life is still at work. Mysterious chemical processes are operating in that silent darkness. The old life shoots up in the grasses. All the lives, and loves, and passions of long ago blossom in the flowers. The life you once knew is giving strength to the sturdy trunks of trees. It flows through the veins of the branches with the sap, and gives color to the leaves. In mythology, the Fauns and Dryads, Naiads and Hamadryads, typified this idea to a certain extent, and were the most beautiful creatures of that beautiful mythology—so beautiful, indeed, that I am heretic enough to acknowledge I would like to have known all those dear divine creatures, so full of good, old-fashioned mortal failings; to have sipped nectar from Hebe's cup, and lunched on ambrosia with the Thunder Bearer himself; to have gone to the opera with Apollo, flirted with the naughty Venus, philosophized with Minerva, taken tea with Juno, and had one roaring old supper with Bacchus.

Thus there are whole races of men in the boundless forests, and friends of yours and mine in the flowers. It seems to me a very pleasant thought to believe that those whom we have loved, and whose lives were so beautiful and graceful, are still growing in the beauty of the flowers, and the grace of the vines; that those whose lives were bad and ungracious, yet exist in the nightshade and hemlock; that those whose lives never blossomed in the shadow of great misfortunes, still live for us in those flowerless plants whose leaves are full of perfume; that Nero is in the Upas, and Marat is in the dogwood.

It is a pleasant fancy to me to think that some friend whom I love will not altogether die, but will live in a rose; that I shall see the red of her cheeks in its petals, and that her grace will continue in its form; that the fragrance of her memory will come to me in the fragrance of its perfume, and that the tears which have stood in her eyes will be forever sacred in the dew drops on its leaves.

There are strong, upright, and sturdy lives, which live again in the firs and pines, which are proof against all storms, and are green when all others are bare and sere; there are far-reaching, all-embracing lives, which live again in the umbrageous oaks; there are lives, which were warped in childhood, which live again in the crooked, gnarled trunks; there are lives full of the gall of bitterness, which never sweeten in the crab and wormwood; there are graceful lives, which curve and undulate in the vines; there are black lives which grow blacker in the poisonous plants, and the birds avoid the vegetable life as the children avoided the human, for birds and children are very much alike; and I think sometimes that the souls of the musicians are still sentient in the murmuring waves of the sea, and in the diapason of the wind-swept pines.

November 14, 1868.