Copper Day Lily. _Hemerocallis fulva._
Dedicated to _St. Ulric_.
[Illustration: ~The London Barrow-woman~]
See! cherries here, ere cherries yet abound,
With thread so white in tempting posies ty’d,
Scatt’ring like blooming maid their glances round
With pamper’d look draw little eyes aside,
And must be bought.
_Shenstone._
This is cherry season, but it is not to me as cherry seasons were. I
like a great deal that _is_, but I have an affection for what _was_.
By-gone days seem to have been more fair than these; and I cannot help
trying to
“catch the manners _dying_ as they _fall_.”
I have lived through the extremity of one age, into the beginning of
another, and I believe a better; yet the former has been too much
detracted: every thing new is not, therefore, good; nor was every thing
old, bad. When I was a boy, I speak of just after the French revolution
broke out, my admiration and taste were pure and natural, and one of my
favourites at all times, and in cherry-time especially, was the London
barrow-woman. There are no barrow-women now. They are quite “gone out,”
or, rather, they have been “put down,” and by many they are not even
missed. Look around; there is not one to be seen.
In those days there were _women_ on the earth; finely grown, every way
well-proportioned, handsome, and in stature like Mrs. Siddons. I speak
of London women. Let not the ladies of the metropolis conceive offence,
if I maintain that some of their mothers, and more among their
grandmothers, were taller and more robust than they. That _they_ are
otherwise may not be in their eyes a misfortune; should they, however,
think it so “their _schools_ are more in fault than they.” Be that as it
may, I am merely stating a fact. They have declined in personal
elevation, as they have increased in moral elevation.