Page:The Talisman.pdf/11

how industrious every body looked! There were the stalls of the vegetables, with their pure and wholesome smell of the freshly turned-up earth; others with fruit—the delicate crimson strawberries, each spotted with gold; the cherries, with their rich varieties of hues—the deep ruby, almost black or coral, as if the moisture of the wave yet lingered upon it—and amber, with one trickling stain of red, so fancifully denominated the "bleeding heart." Further on was a stall of foreign fruits: the pale cool lemon; the red gold of the orange; the pine—with its yellow carved globe, and its coronal of silvery green—the architectural pine, so rich and so massive. But most beautiful of all, shewing the deep delight the heart takes in loveliness, were the stands of many flowers. There they crowded in fragrant multitudes, each kind tied up in separate bunches; the yellow lupin, like "a clump of shining spears;" pinks, each with the dark central spot, like the purple and painted stain round the eye of an eastern sultana; the light branches of the small saffron flowers, of that deep blue so rare among "the painted populace," which seem to delight in gayer dyes; the sweet pea, with its wings of the butterfly, its colours of the rainbow; and roses, in all their infinite variety—the white, like driven snow; the soft pink, almost as lovely as the maiden's blush which gives it its name; the parti-coloured damask, the chivalric and historic rose, recalling the fierce combats of York and Lancaster; and the moss, so