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charms can not be duly typified, till we shall have reached those abodes where reigns everlasting spring, and where decay is unknown.

But little study will be requisite for the science which we teach. Nature has been before us. We must, however, premise two or three rules. When a flower is presented in its natural position, the sentiment is to be understood affirmatively; when reversed, negatively. For instance, a rose-bud, with its leaves and thorns, indicates fear with hope; but, if reversed, it must be construed as saying "you may neither fear nor hope." Again, divest the same rose-bud of its thorns, and it permits the most sanguine hope; deprive it of its petals, and retain the thorns,

INTRODUCTION.

Ir we may believe modern interpreters, the language of flowers was known to the ancients, and it would appear that the Greeks understood the art of communicating a secret message through the medium of a bouquet. It is only necessary to consult the Dream-book of Artemidorus to be convinced that every individual flower of which the wreaths of the ancients were composed conveyed some particular meaning. At all events, it is evident that garlands were conspicuous in the emblematic devices of antiquity.

Our English poets have not neglected to avail themselves of the emblematic language of flowers. On this subject, a late writer has the following observations.

B

Shakspeare has evinced in several of his plays a knowledge and a love of flowers, but in no instance has he shown his taste and judgment in the selection of them with greater effect than in forming the coronal wreath of the lovely maniac, Ophelia. The Queen describes the garland as composed of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long-purples; and there can be no question that Shakspeare intended them all to have an emblematic meaning.

The crow-flower is a species of lychnis, alluded to by Drayton in his Polyolbion. The common English name is meadow lychnis, or meadow campion. It is sometimes found double in our hedge-rows, but more commonly in France; and in this form we are told by Parkinson it was called The Fayre Mayde of France. It is to this name and to this variety that Shakspeare alludes in Hamlet.

The long-purples are commonly called dead men's hands, or fingers.

"

Our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them."

The daisy (or day's eye) imports the pure

virginity or spring of life, as being itself the virgin bloom of the year.

The intermixture of nettles requires no com

ment.

Admitting the correctness of this interpretation, the whole is an exquisite specimen of emblematic or picture-writing. They are all wild flowers, denoting the bewildered state of the beautiful Ophelia's own faculties; and the order runs thus, with the meaning of each term beneath :

CROW-FLOWERS. NETTLES. DAISIES.

Fayre Mayde

LONG-PURPLES.

Stung to Her virgin Under the cold the quick

bloom hand of death

"A fair maid stung to the quick; her virgin bloom under the cold hand of death."

It would be difficult to find a more emblematic wreath for this interesting victim of disappointed love and filial sorrow.

Flowers, the emblems and favourites of the fair, are not every where prized merely for their beauty and their perfume; invention has created from them symbolic phrases for expressing the secret sentiments of the heart. This language is most generally used by the Turkish and Greek women in the Levant, and by the African females on the coast of Barbary.

Castellan, in his Letters on Greece," mentions that when he was passing through the lovely valley of Bujukderu on the Bosphorus, his attention was attracted by a little country pleasure-house, surrounded by a neat garden. Beneath one of the grated windows stood a young Turk, who, after playing a light prelude on the tambur, a sort of mandoline, sang a lovesong, in which the following verse occurred:The nightingale wanders from flower to flower, Seeking the rose, his heart's only prize;* Thus did my love change every hour,

Until I saw thee, light of my eyes!

No sooner was the song ended than a small white hand opened the lattice of the window, and dropped a bunch of flowers. The young Turk picked up the nosegay, and appeared to read in it some secret message. He pressed it to his bosom, then fastened it in his turban, and, after making some signs towards the window, he withdrew. The young gallant appeared from his dress to be nothing more than a poor water

* Alluding to the love of the nightingale for the rose, which is a favourite theme of the Oriental poets. The nightingale, a bird of passage in the East, as with us, appears at the season when the rose begins to blow.

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