the temples, altars, and statues of our gods: that we crown our heads with them in our festivals, and holy ceremonies; that we scatter them upon our tables, and our beds; that we even consider the kinds of flowers most agreeable to our divinities. Besides, an agriculturist should not neglect small profits; whenever I send to the market of Athens, wood, provision, or fruit, I add some baskets of flowers, and they are seized instantly."

In another part of the same work, the author describes a marriage ceremony in the Island of Delos, in which flowers, shrubs, and trees make a conspicuous figure. He tells us that the inhabitants of the island assembled at day-break, crowned with flowers: that flowers were strewed in the path of the bride and bridegroom: the house was garlanded with them: singers and dancers appeared, crowned with oak, myrtle, and hawthorns: the bride and bridegroom were crowned with poppies; and upon their approach to the temple a priest received them at the entrance, presenting to each a branch of ivy,—a symbol of the tie which was to unite them for ever *.

It was not in their sports only that the Greeks were so lavish of their flowers: they crowned the dead with them; and the mourners wore them in the funeral ceremonies. Flowers seem to have been to this tasteful people a sort of poetic language, whereby they expressed the intensity of feelings to which they found common language inadequate. Thus we find that their grief, and their joy, their religion, and their sports, their gratitude, admiration, and love, were alike expressed by flowers.

And flowers do speak a language, a clear and intelligible language: ask Mr. Wordsworth, for to him they have spoken, until they excited "thoughts that lie too deep for tears;" ask Chaucer, for he held companionship with them in the meadows; ask any of the poets, ancient or modern. Observe them, reader, love them, linger over

* Vol. vi. chapter 77.

them; and ask your own heart if they do not speak affection, benevolence, and piety. None have better understood the language of flowers than the simple-minded peasant-poet, Clare, whose volumes are like a beautiful country, diversified with woods, meadows, heaths, and flower-gardens: the following is a pleasing specimen :

Bowing adorers of the gale,

Ye cowslips delicately pale,

Upraise your loaded stems;

Unfold your cups in splendour, speak!
Who decked you with that ruddy streak,
And gilt your golden gems?

"Violets, sweet tenants of the shade,
In purple's richest pride arrayed,
Your errand here fulfil ;
Go bid the artist's simple stain
Your lustre imitate, in vain,

And match your Maker's skill.

"Daisies, ye flowers of lowly birth,
Embroiderers of the carpet earth,
That stud the velvet sod;
Open to spring's refreshing air,
In sweetest smiling bloom declare

Your Maker, and my God *.”

This poet is truly a lover of Nature; in her humblest attire she still is pleasing to him, and the sight of a simple weed seems to him a source of delight:

"There's many a seeming weed proves sweet,

As sweet as garden-flowers can bet."

In his lines to Cowper Green, he celebrates plants that seldom find a bard to sing them having enumerated several, he continues ;

"Still thou ought'st to have thy meed,

To show thy flower, as well as weed.

* Clare's Village Minstrel and other Poems, vol. ii. page 61.
+ Clare's Poems on Rural Life, &c. page 63.

Though no fays, from May-day's lap,
Cowslips on thee dare to drop;
Still does nature yearly bring
Fairest heralds of the spring:
On thy wood's warm sunny side
Primrose blooms in all its pride;
Violets carpet all thy bowers;
And anemone's weeping flowers,
Dyed in winter's snow and rime,
Constant to their early time,
White the leaf-strewn ground again,
And make each wood a garden then.
Thine's full many a pleasing bloom
Of blossoms lost to all perfume:
Thine the dandelion flowers,

Gilt with dew, like suns with showers;
Harebells thine, and bugles blue,

And cuckoo flowers all sweet to view;
Thy wild-woad on each road we see ;
And medicinal betony,

By thy woodside railing, reeves

With antique mullein's flannel leaves.

These, though mean, the flowers of waste,

Planted here in nature's haste,

Display to the discerning eye

Her loved, wild variety:

Each has charms in nature's book

I cannot pass without a look.

And thou hast fragrant herbs and seed,
Which only garden's culture need:
Thy horehound tufts, I love them well,
And ploughman's spikenard's spicy smell;
Thy thyme, strong-scented 'neath one's feet;
Thy marjoram beds, so doubly sweet;
And pennyroyals creeping twine:
These, each succeeding each, are thine,
Spreading o'er thee, wild and gay,
Blessing spring, or summer's day.

As herb, flower, weed, adorn thy scene,

Pleased I seek thee, Cowper Green."

VILLAGE MINSTREL, &c. vol. i. page 113.

The eloquence of flowers is not perhaps so generally

understood in this country as it might be, but Mr. Bowring scarcely does us justice in the following observations:

"In the Peninsula the wildest flowers are the sweetest. There are hedges of myrtles, and geraniums, and pomegranates, and towering aloes. The sunflower and the bloody warrior (Aleli grosero) occupy the parterre: they are no favourites of mine.

"Flowers! what a hundred associations the word brings to my mind! Of what countless songs, sweet and sacred, delicate and divine, are they the subject! A flower in England is something to the botanist,—but only if it be rare; to the florist,—but only if it be beautiful: even the poet and the moralizer seldom bend down to its eloquent silence. The peasant never utters to it an ejaculation—the ploughman (all but one) carelessly tears it up with his share—no maiden thinks of wreathing it—no youth aspires to wear it: But in Spain ten to one but it becomes a minister of love, that it hears the voice of poetry, that it crowns the brow of beauty. Thus how sweetly an anonymous cancionero sings:

"Put on your brightest richest dress,

Wear all your gems, blest vale of ours!
My fair one comes in her loveliness,
She comes to gather flowers.

"Garland me wreaths, thou fertile vale;
Woods of green your coronets bring;
Pinks of red, and lilies pale,

Come with your fragrant offering.

Mingle your charms of hue and smell,

Which Flora wakes in her spring-tide hours!

My fair one comes across the dell,

She comes to gather flowers.

"Twilight of morn! from thy misty tower

Scatter the trembling pearls around,

Hang up thy gems on fruit and flower,
Bespangle the dewy ground!

Phoebus, rest on thy ruby wheels—
Look, and envy this world of ours;
For my fair one now descends the hills,
She comes to gather flowers.

"List! for the breeze on wings serene

Through the light foliage sails;
Hidden amidst the forest green
Warble the nightingales!

Hailing the glorious birth of day
With music's best, divinest powers,
Hither my fair one bends her way,

She comes to gather flowers."

LONDON MAGAZINE, Spanish Romances, No. 3. For the most part of our countrymen, I fear they do not allow themselves leisure to admire or enjoy the beauties of nature; yet it cannot be said that they are utterly insensible to them; for with regard to flowers at least we may observe, that on Sundays every village beau, nay every straggling townsman who comes on that day within reach of a flower, has one in his button-hole.

It was, perhaps, the general power of sympathy upon the subject of plants, which caused them to be connected with some of the earliest events that history records. The mythologies of all nations are full of them; and in all times they have been associated with the soldiery, the government, and the arts. Thus the patriot was crowned with oak; the hero and the poet with bay; and beauty with the myrtle. Peace had her olive; Bacchus his ivy; and whole groves of oak-trees were thought to send out oracular voices in the winds. One of the most pleasing parts of state-splendor has been associated with flowers, as Shakspeare seems to have had in his mind when he wrote that beautiful line respecting the accomplished prince, Hamlet:

"The expectancy and rose of the fair state."