Florimel

“ The painter was not merely in love with Florimel: he loved her. I will not say that he was in no degree dazzled by her rank, or that he felt no triumph, as a social nomad camping on the no-man's-land of society, at the thought of the justification of the human against the conventional, in his scaling of the giddy heights of superiority, and, on one of its topmost peaks, taking from her nest that rare bird in the earth, a landed and titled marchioness. ”

“ The spirit has its risings and settings of sun and moon, its clouds and stars, its seasons, its solstices, its tides, its winds, its storms, its earthquakes — infinite vitality in endless fluctuation. To rule these changes Florimel had neither the power that comes of love nor the strength that comes of obedience. What of conscience she had was not yet conscience toward God, which is the guide to freedom, but conscience toward society, which is the slave of a fool. It was no wonder then that Lenorme, believing, hoping, she loved him, should find her hard to understand. ”

“ Black shadows fell from sail to sail, slipping and shifting, and one long shadow of the Psyche herself shot over the world to the very gates of the west, but held her not, for she danced and leaned and flew as if she had but just begun her coranto-lavolta fresh with the morning, and had not been dancing all the livelong night over the same floor. Lively as any new-born butterfly — not like a butterfly's flitting and hovering — was her flight, for still, like one that longed, she sped and strained and flew. The joy of bare life swelled in Florimel's bosom. ”

“ The shepherd was very angry, but all the sea-folk had to obey Neptune, so he sulkily opened the prison door and let Florimell go free.
When the black-browed Cymoënt took hold of the little white hand of the maiden her son loved, and looked on her lovely face, she was no longer sorry that Marinell did not wish to marry a sea-nymph. For no maiden in the sea was as beautiful or as sweet as Florimell. ”

“ The Fountain of Youth, sought for in vain by Ponce de Leon three hundred and seventy years ago, is in Florida. Time has not dried up the source of its health-giving, its life-giving, waters. They flow as of yore, and every one who thirsteth can partake of them freely. Invalids and pleasure-seekers find it in our glorious climate, in our invigorating breezes, which blow as soft and balmy as those from Ceylon’s isle; in our beautiful flowers and almost perpetual verdure, and in the total absence of the chilling winds and frosts of the North and West, which render life almost unendurable. ”

“ Nearly every afternoon they sat by a small table under an orange tree, or beside the blue water, or on a city sidewalk, and had nice things to eat and drink.
The people were always kind to them and the sky was nearly always sunny. It is a land of sunshine and flowers and fruit, like our own sunny Florida, though Italy is much more beautiful. It is hardly twice the size of Florida, but nearly one-third as many people live there as live in the whole of our great United States. It is a crowded, happy, lovely country, and Molly and May will never forget their wonderful journey through it. ”

“ A garland of dark green wood, resembling myrtle, surrounds the great lake, for at this distance we cannot distinguish between groves of orange and palmetto and forests of cypress. The whole shore is low, and the lake as clear as a mirror, and everything profoundly still around it. No cities and towns, no steamboats, no boats of any kind, no human beings, excepting ourselves, the Florida travellers. Here is infant land, nay, almost wild land still. But how glad I am to be now in the poetical wilderness of Florida, to have seen something of its marvellous, natural poetry! ”

“ The ride through Florida is tedious. The miles of palmettoes, with leaves glittering like racks of bared cutlasses in the sun, the miles of dark swamp, in which the cypresses seem to wade like dismal club-footed men, the miles of live-oak strung with their sad tattered curtains of Spanish moss, the miles of sandy waste, of pineapple [Pg 593] and orange groves, of pines with feathery palm-like tops, above all the sifting of fine Florida dust, which covers everything inside the car as with a coat of flour—these make you wish that you were North again. ”

“ The influences of scene and climate were felt for good amongst the people who were represented at once as the most generous and gentle of all the Floridian natives. They had no wild passions, and coveted no fierce delights. Under the sway of a woman, at once young and beautiful, the daughter of their most favorite monarch, their souls had become attuned to sympathies which greatly tended to subdue and to soothe the savage nature. ”

“ Never had the eyes of white men beheld this land of beauty before. English ships had sailed along the coast to the north, finding much of it bleak and uninviting. The caravels of Columbus had threaded the glowing line of tropic isles, and later ships had borne settlers to these lands of promise. But the rich southlands of the continent had never before been seen, and well was this unknown realm of beauty named Florida by the Spanish chief, whether by this name he meant to call it the "land of flowers" or referred to the Spanish name for Easter, Pascua Florida. ”

“ Everything grows with a spontaneity that is surprising—fruits and flowers everywhere in the woods and wildernesses in wild luxuriance. The very nature of things seems to be reversed; pears grow on graceful vines, peas on stately trees, and some things (as witness the air plant) grow on nothing at all. But in spite of the richness of the soil, the geniality of the climate, Florida is not exactly a paradise; here as elsewhere man must carry out the great law, and labour for his daily bread. Nature is prolific, and yields her treasures ungrudgingly, but she demands something in return. ”

“ In February, 1888, I went to see the Americans taking their pleasure in Florida. During the months of January, February, and March, flocks of society people from the great towns in the north go to Florida, where the sun is warm, and the orange trees are in full beauty of fruit and flower. Jacksonville and St. Augustine are in winter what Saratoga, Newport, and Long Branch are in summer: the rendezvous of all who have any pretension to a place in the fashionable world. ”

“ That’s driving a little boat through pernickety country some. My, but this cold norther feels good and the air is fit to breathe. We were not sorry to bid good-bye to Florida yesterday morning. It is a queer puzzle of a country and I understand it not at all. A land filled with hope, enthusiasm and speculative boom on one side; with poverty, want and failure just around the corner. A land of sweltering, enervating days and nights. A country full of dark, silent, mysterious places and fringed with bright, sparkling beaches. A land of creeping, crawling things and of big birds with broad wings. ”

“ The enthusiastic rise more or less on the wings of their fertile imagination, when exaggerated accounts, highly colored, are written about Florida as it appeared to them—the change from the North to a land clothed in the perpetual verdure of spring-time being so great, they were enraptured in a manner that others of less delicate susceptibilities have failed to realize. The indifferent tourist is an anomaly to everybody. ”

“ One cannot do everything.
Now, alas, Florida seems very far off. I am never likely to walk again under those New Smyrna live-oaks, nor to see again all that beauty of the Hillsborough. And yet, in a truer and better sense of the word, I do see it, and shall. What a heavenly light falls at this moment on the river and the island woods! Perhaps we must come back to Wordsworth, after all,—
“The light that never was, on sea or land.” ”

“ In leaving Jacksonville, we supposed we were leaving all this behind us, not knowing that Florida is full of quaint jewelry made, as the jewelry of no other part of the world, out of fish scales, saurian teeth, sea beans, shells, orange tree woods, and sharks’ molars; that everywhere there are wonderful stories which only differ from one another in size; that palmetto hats were to be bought in every village store, and that sour oranges hang from innumerable trees, valueless for traffic, and only begging to be made into nectar fit for gods. ”

“ For ourselves, we are getting reconciled to a sort of tumble-down, wild, picnicky kind of life,—this general happy-go-luckiness which Florida inculcates. If we painted her, we should not represent her as a neat, trim damsel, with starched linen cuffs and collar: she would be a brunette, dark but comely, with gorgeous tissues, a general disarray and dazzle, and with a sort of jolly untidiness, free, easy, and joyous. ”

“ We know how intimately connected is the worship of the sun with the veneration of water; heat typifying the masculine, moisture the feminine principle. The universality of their association in the Old World cosmogonies and mythologies is too well-known to need specification, and it is quite as invariable in those of the New Continent. That such magnificent springs as occur in Florida should have become objects of special veneration, and their fame bruited far and wide, and handed down from father to son, is a most natural consequence in such faiths. ”

“ Florida is so watery and vine-tied that pathless wanderings are not easily possible in any direction. I started to cross the State by a gap hewn for the locomotive, walking sometimes between the rails, stepping from tie to tie, or walking on the strip of sand at the sides, gazing into the mysterious forest, Nature’s own. It is impossible to write the dimmest picture of plant grandeur so redundant, unfathomable. ”

“ Then I laughed, and I suppose that broke the spell, but it was enough to make anyone laugh, for the Florida heron, wading leg deep in the St. Johns River, has the same self-conscious dignity, the same absurd rhythmic hesitancy of motion as a wedding procession going up the aisle. I have seen a great many grooms wade in and I never saw anything a bit different.
The high road and high noon and I met in the heart of a pine wood where all things had forgotten the frost in a midsummer temperature, and short-horned grasshoppers made merry all about. ”

“ Favored indeed is Florida, not only in climate, scenery, and fruit, but with the munificence of these mighty-hearted millionaires, who have Alladin-like metamorphosed the sunny peninsula into a veritable fairyland. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. H. B. Plant, who has transmogrified Tampa, and ribboned Florida with his railroad system. As usual with men of great minds and means, he is wholly unpretentious, as much so as his humblest employee. ”

“ The fact is, that people cannot come to heartily like Florida till they accept certain deficiencies as the necessary shadow to certain excellences. If you want to live in an orange-orchard, you must give up wanting to live surrounded by green grass. When we get to the new heaven and the new earth, then we shall have it all right. There we shall have a climate at once cool and bracing, yet hot enough to mature oranges and pine-apples. Our trees of life shall bear twelve manner of fruit, and yield a new one every month. ”

“ But in the dense Florida forests sunlight cannot enter. It falls on the evergreen roof and rebounds in long silvery lances and flashy spray. In many places there is not light sufficient to feed a single green leaf on these dark forest floors. All that the eye can reach is just a maze of tree stems and crooked leafless vine strings. All the flowers, all the verdure, all the glory is up in the light.
The streams of Florida are still young, and in many places are untraceable. ”

“ Miss Dix, who came by steamer to Savannah, has joined our little party, as she also wishes to visit Florida. The weather is glorious, the moon is at the full, and I am full of the desire for travelling, and the desire to see Florida, the flower of the Southern States, the land of which the delicious balmy odours made the Spaniards believe that the fountain of eternal youth was hidden there. And now—thither, thither, to taste its nectar!
The Magnolia, May 17. Very seldom are letters written from a steamer which lies on a green meadow ”

“ FLORIDA is a large and fruitful country in North America, bounded on the north-east by Carolina, on the south, and some part of the west, by New Galicia and some countries not yet discovered. The air is very temperate, and soil extremely fertile, and produces grain, herbs, and fruit in great abundance. Ferdinando Soto, after the conquest of Peru, entered this country May 25, 1538, and gave it the name Florida, because the flowers were then on the ground, but died of grief, for being disappointed of the treasures which he expected. ”

“ The river Perdido being its western, and the Apalachicola its eastern limit.
The capital of East Florida is St. Augustin; that of West Florida, Pensacola.
During the struggle of Great Britain with her American colonies in 1781; Spain took forcible possession of Florida, and it was confirmed to that crown by the treaty of peace in 1783.
The climate of the Floridas, is for the most part tolerably good; in the summer it is very hot; the winters cold, and the rivers are frequently frozen during that season. Inland, and on the mountains, the air is very pure and salubrious. ”

“ Along this famous peninsula the sea rolls with ceaseless beat upon some of the most gorgeous beaches of the American coast. To the glories of tropical vegetation and the charms of the climate, Florida thus adds the magnificence of its unrivalled marine environment. ”