239 



AN ESSAY ON FLOWERS. 



BY H. T. TUCKERMAN, NEW YORK. 



[Concluded from p. 226.] 



The Orientals, adepts in voluptuous ease, place vases of flowers around 

 their fountains ; and as they lie upon divans, their eyes close, in the 

 refreshing siesta, with these radiant sentinels for the last image to 

 blend with their dreams, and their odour to mingle with the misty 

 spray and cheer their waking. The Greek maidens dropped flowers 

 from their windows on those that passed, to indicate their scorn, 

 praise, or love. One of the poetic touches which redeem the frugal 

 lot of the grisettes, is the habit they indulge of keeping a box of 

 mignonette on their window-sills. You may see them at dawn bend- 

 ing over it to sprinkle the roots or enjoy the perfume. In Tuscany 

 and the Neapolitan territory peasants wear gay flowers in their hats ; 

 while the more grave people of the intervening country rarely so 

 adorn themselves. I was struck, at the wedding of an American in 

 France, to see the servants, tearful at parting with their mistress, 

 decorating the interior of her carriage with white flowers. There is 

 something, however, very artiflcial in the dry immortels, here and 

 there dyed black, for sale at the gates of Pere la Chaise, and bought 

 by the humbler class of mourners to hang on the crosses that mark 

 the graves of kindred. Our own rural cemeteries are teaching a 

 better lesson. The culture of flowers on such domains is not only 

 in excellent taste, but, when judiciously selected and arranged, a 

 grateful memorial. At Monaco, a town in Italy, a few years since, 

 the body of a young child was covered with flowers, according to the 

 custom of the place ; and when sought for the purpose of interment, 

 it was found sitting up and playing with the flowers— an affecting 

 and beautiful evidence of the ignorance of death characteristic of 

 that spotless age. 



Fashion seldom interferes with Nature without diminishing her 

 grace and efficiency. It denudes the masculine face of the beard, its 

 distinctive feature ; substitutes for the harmonious movement of the 

 chaste and blithesome dance, the angular caprices of the polka ; clips 

 and squares the picturesque in landscape into formalised proportions ; 

 and condemns half the world to an unattractive and inconvenient 

 costume. Even flowers seem profaned by its touch ; there is some- 

 thing morbid in their breath when exhaled profusely in gorgeous 

 saloons and ostentatiously displayed at a heartless banquet; and 

 wisely as the florist may adjust them into bouquets, they are so 

 firmly entwined and intricately massed together as often to resemble 

 mosaic. We turn often from the most costly specimen of this ap- 

 panage of the ball and opera, with a feeHng of relief, to the single 

 white rose-bud on a maiden's breast, or the light jasmin wreath on 

 her brow. The quantity and showy combination of the flowers, espe- 

 cially the heated atmosphere and commonplace gabble of the scene, 

 and often the want of correspondence between the person who so 



