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Various

"The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 62, December, 1862"

The form and color are beautiful, "but, being
too high above the soil, they disturb that harmonious proportion which
characterizes the plants of our European meadows. Nature has, in every
zone, stamped on the landscape the peculiar type of beauty proper to
the locality." But every midsummer reveals the same tendency. In early
spring, when all is bare, and small objects are easily made prominent,
the wild-flowers are generally delicate. Later, when all verdure is
profusely expanded, these miniature strokes would be lost, and Nature
then practises landscape-gardening in large, lights up the copses with
great masses of White Alder, makes the roadsides gay with Aster and
Golden-Rod, and tops the tall coarse Meadow-Grass with nodding Lilies
and tufted Spiraea. One instinctively follows these plain hints, and
gathers bouquets sparingly in spring and exuberantly in summer.
The use of wild-flowers for decorative purposes merits a word in
passing, for it is unquestionably a branch of high art in favored hands.


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