The first time that I saw the soldanella alpina, before spoken of, it was
growing, of magnificent size, on a sunny Alpine pasture, among bleating of sheep and lowing of cattle, associated with a profusion of geum
montanum, and ranunculus pyrenæus. I noticed it only because new to me, nor
perceived any peculiar beauty in its cloven flower. Some days after, I found it
alone, among the rack of the higher clouds, and howling of glacier winds, and,
as I described it, piercing through an edge of avalanche, which in its retiring
had left the new ground brown and lifeless, and as if burned by recent fire; the
plant was poor and feeble, and seemingly exhausted with its efforts, but it was
then that I comprehended its ideal character, and saw its noble function and
order of glory among the constellations of the earth. cheap oil paintings
The ranunculus glacialis might perhaps, by cultivation, be blanched from its
wan and corpse-like paleness to purer white, and won to more branched and lofty
development of its ragged leaves. But the ideal of the plant is to be found only
in the last, loose stones of the moraine, alone there; wet with the cold,
unkindly drip of the glacier water, and trembling as the loose and steep dust to
which it clings yields ever and anon, and shudders and crumbles away from about
its root. art oil painting online
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