with flowers of golden tissue, and requests him to accept it, as a friendly gift from the wife of Hector to a youth, in whom appeared the charms and graces of her lost Astyanax, is exceedingly beautiful1. Nothing can be more affecting than the whole passage. Flowers are inwoven in the shawls of Cashmire; and the Chinese embroider all their works with the flowers and foliage of the shrub, called Hai-Tang, much celebrated by their poets. The practice is imitated in the Gobelin tapestry and the Dresden china: and when Mons. de Boisgelin was in Denmark, a service of porcelain was preparing, on which were delineated all the plants of the Flora Botanica, classed and arranged according to the system of Linnæus. In nothing do the Chinese, Japanese, Siamese, and Persian porcelain yield to those of Dresden and Worcester, more, than in the selection of natural colours and subjects. II. The songs of the Hungarian peasantry frequently conclude with the wish, "Oh that I had a large garden, well stocked with fruit; a farm well stocked with cattle; and a young and beautiful wife." In the city of Toulouse prevailed a custom, which is as agreeable to the imagination, as any we read of in the history of ancient manners. 1 Accipe, et bæc, manuum tibi quæ monumenta mearum Sic oculos, sic ille manus, sic ora ferebat: Eneid, lib. iii. l. 486. An account of this custom is preserved in the archives of that city, and is to the following effect. Seven persons of condition, having resolved to do honour to the cause of poesy, formed themselves into a society, and wrote to all the Troubadours, in the south of France, requesting them to meet on the first of May at Toulouse; and there to rehearse any poem, they might chose to recite. Intimating, at the same time, that a golden violet should be awarded to the author of the poem, which should be esteemed the best. In consequence of this invitation, a vast assemblage of Troubadours entered Toulouse; and the whole ceremony gave so much delight to the ladies and gentry of that city, that they took charge of the future meetings; and appointed a chancellor, and secretary to the institution. These meetings were continued every year, and three other prizes added. The winner of the first enjoyed the violet; the second an eglantine; the third a carnation; and the fourth a pansy. Whoever bore away the four together was admitted doctor of poetry. In distributing rewards, and in conferring honours, nature is most commonly appealed to. The poets were crowned with bays, and conquerors with laurel. Of the ten kinds of bearings, into which the art of heraldry is divided, seven consist of signs, drawn from the natural world. The fleur-de-lis of France is a lily; that of England a rose; and while the coronets of earls and marquisses are composed chiefly of points and flowers, and those of dukes are floral, the principal decorations of the higher descriptions of honour are stars, eagles, and crescents. When we would welcome a hero, or a monarch, to his home, boughs are scattered in his path; and many of our own ancient festivals were celebrated under an oak: The young women with nosegays in their hands; and the young men with oak-leaves in their hats. In Salency, a small village in Picardy, there still remains an interesting custom. It is called "the festival of the rose." On a certain day of every year the young women of the village assemble. After a solemn trial before competent judges, that young woman, who has conducted herself the most discreetly, and gives the most affecting proofs of the general innocence and simplicity of her character, is decorated with a crown, which thenceforward becomes an object of pride to all her family. The crown is a hat covered with roses. It frequently constitutes the whole wealth of the wearer; but the instances are far from unfrequent, in which it has been esteemed the most honourable recommendation to a wealthy suitor. This custom was instituted by St. Medard, in the fifteenth century. He was the sole proprietor of the village; and his sister the fortunate winner of the original prize. To the time of the revolution, this festival was observed with all the circumstances of preparation and solemnity, that marked its primary institution, thirteen centuries before. Madam de Genlis has written a comedy, in two acts, upon this subject: "The Queen of the Rose of Salency." Louis XIII despatched the Marquis de Gordes from Varennes to Salency, with presents of a blue ribbon and a white ring, for the Queen of the Rose; and in 1766 Mons. Morfontaine made a settlement of 120 livres upon the annual winner. The Samnites, too, had a fine custom amongst them. It was that of convening the youth into one place every year; where they underwent a trial of virtue; and the one, who was declared to have the most merit, had the privilege of selecting the most beautiful and most virtuous maiden from among the entire republic, for a wife1. III. The association between flowers and poetry is well preserved by Lucretius. Juvatque novos decerpere flores : De Nat. Rer. lib. i. 927. From this association it is, that all collections of poems were anciently called Anthologies. The "flower of the 1 Montesquieu reasons with his usual ingenuity upon this law, preserved among the fragments of Nicolaus Damascenus. Spirit of Laws, b. vii. ch. 16. 2 Seneca compares lessons to grains of seeds. The quality of the fruit, says he, depends entirely on the soil, in which they have been sown. Epist. xxxviii. Nature, says Pliny the naturalist, has some flowers for pleasure: these last but a day she has trees for use, which last for years; as if she intended to intimate, that whatever is splendid passes away, and soon loses its lustre. Nat. Hist. xxi. c. I.-Rollin contrasts gardens of art with scenes of general Nature, in an excellent passage, too long to quote. It is formed upon a passage in Cicero and another in Juvenal t. It compares the former with the florid style of eloquence-the latter with the grand and sublime. It will repay a reader for the trouble of referring to it ‡.-In Javanese poetry § is a passage, which forcibly recals a similar one in a speech of Pericles, in respect to the cypress. Melancholy is it to see a young man of condition unacquainted with the sacred writings; for be he ever so gracefully formed, or elegant in his manners, he still remains defective. like the wurawari flower, which, notwithstanding its fine appearance and bright red colour, emits no fragrance whatever." 66 *De Natur. Deorum. ii. Belles Lettres, ii. 88. VOL. II. + Lib. i. Sat. 3. F flock," too, has been a proverbial expression in all ages. The Emperor of China assumes the titles of "the Flower of Courtesy;" the "Nutmeg of Consolation ;" and the "Rose of Delight." In some parts of his empire a virgin, when she has attained a marriageable age, places in the window of her apartment a set of flower-pots. The Afghauns employ them as tokens, by which one friend, living at a distance, may send a verbal message to another. Thus a servant begins a message "If you and my master were sitting by yourselves in a garden; and he told you, that he had counted thirty-four different kinds of flowers, within a few yards, in the hills of Caubul, that is to be a sign to you, that what I say comes from him." The tales of the East have frequent allusions, relative to the intercourse, carried on by the interchange of fruits, buds, flowers, spices, leaves, and petals. Davies, in his Celtic Researches, describes a similar custom among the ancient Britons. In some parts of Spain, lovers, during the seasons of spring, summer, and early autumn, never fail to accompany their serenades with large bouquets of flowers; which, when practicable, they throw into their mistress's window, singing songs or striking their instruments, with all the delicacy they are master of. Flowers, too, in ancient times were supposed to contain so much virtue, that Uriel, the angel, with a view of making Esdras more pure, and therefore less unworthy of searching into the 1 The Javans call poetry sekar, "flowers of the language:" vide Raffles' Hist. Java, i. p. 398. And orators speak of "flowers of rhetoric ;" an association first used by Cicero. Vide De Oratore. |