small as they look, keep diffusing an airy wealth of fragrance for years
and years together, scattering their virtue in incalculable volumes of
invisible vapor, and yet are none the less in bulk for all they give;
whenever he turned over the yellow leaves, bits of gold, diamonds of good
size, precious pearls, seemed to drop out from between them.

And now ensued a surprise which, though of a happy kind, was almost too
much for him to bear; for it made his heart beat considerably faster than
the wise rules of his manuscript prescribed. Going up on his hill-top, as
summer wore away (he had not been there for some time), and walking by the
little flowery hillock, as so many a hundred times before, what should he
see there but a new flower, that during the time he had been poring over
the manuscript so sedulously had developed itself, blossomed, put forth
its petals, bloomed into full perfection, and now, with the dew of the
morning upon it, was waiting to offer itself to Septimius? He trembled as
he looked at it, it was too much almost to bear,--it was so very
beautiful, so very stately, so very rich, so very mysterious and
wonderful. It was like a person, like a life! Whence did it come? He stood
apart from it, gazing in wonder; tremulously taking in its aspect, and
thinking of the legends he had heard from Aunt Keziah and from Sibyl Dacy;
and how that this flower, like the one that their wild traditions told of,
had grown out of a grave,--out of a grave in which he had laid one slain
by himself.

The flower was of the richest crimson, illuminated with a golden centre of
a perfect and stately beauty. From the best descriptions that I have been
able to gain of it, it was more like a dahlia than any other flower with
which I have acquaintance; yet it does not satisfy me to believe it really
of that species, for the dahlia is not a flower of any deep
characteristics, either lively or malignant, and this flower, which