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The taste for flowers every where increasing among us is an omen of good. Let us adorn our parlors, door-ways, yards, and road-sides with trees, and shrubs, and flowers. What a delight do they give to the passer-by!

Some of these crag-masses rival the fantastic cliffs of Capri, and all consist of that southern mountain limestone which changes from pale yellow to blue grey and dusky orange. A river roars precipitately through the pass, and the road-sides wave with many sorts of campanulas a profusion of azure and purple bells upon the hard white stone.

Frazer, "call this plant Neglected Everlasting, because it grows on dry wastes by road-sides, among thistles and fire-weed; but I love it for its sweetness; it is like a true friend it never changes. See, my dear, how shining its straw-coloured blossoms and buds are, just like satin flowers."

It is owing in still greater measure to the value of Oak-wood for ship-timber, especially as those full-grown trees which have sprung up by the road-sides, and the noble pasture Oaks, contain the greatest number of those joints which are in special demand for ship-building.

The Lombardy Poplar is interesting to thousands who were familiar with it in their youth, as an ornament to road-sides and village inclosures. It was formerly a favorite shade-tree, and still retains its privileges in many old-fashioned places.

But the poetry of the Pleiad is true not only to the physiognomy of its age, but also to its country ce pays du Vendomois the names and scenery of which so often recur in it; the great Loire, with its long spaces of white sand; the little river Loir; the heathy, upland country, with its scattered pools of water and waste road-sides, and retired manors, with their crazy old feudal defences half fallen into decay; La Beauce, the granary of France, where the vast rolling fields of corn seem to anticipate the great western sea itself.

The father of Ramouna had been one of that strange and mysterious race which presents in Spain so many features distinct from the characteristics of its kindred tribes in more civilized lands. The Gitano, or gypsy of Spain, is not the mere vagrant we see on our commons and road-sides.

One cannot spend twenty-four hours in this country without being drawn into the vortex of this absorbing mystery; it hangs over the entire section, lingers along the road-sides, finds outward sign and habitation in old buildings, monuments, and ruins; it echoes from the past in musty books, papers, and pamphlets; it once was politics, now is history; the years have not solved it; time is helpless.

'The country is a Catholic country, wooden images of the crucified Saviour on the road-sides, and the greater part of cottages here built of timber log, and the people in an inferior condition. 'As soon as I had dined with the Consul I took my way to the shore of the Vistula.

The father of Ramouna had been one of that strange and mysterious race which presents in Spain so many features distinct from the characteristics of its kindred tribes in more civilized lands. The Gitano, or gypsy of Spain, is not the mere vagrant we see on our commons and road-sides.