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and meritorious) wherewith they use to instru(5l their people ; but 

 I dare say, God never willed His priests to instrucft His people with 

 lies: for they come from the Devill, the author of them." 1 



In early times, it was customary in Europe to employ parti- 

 cular colours for the purpose of indicating ideas and feelings, and 

 in France where the symbolical meaning of colours was formed 

 into a regular system, much importance was attached to the art of 

 symbolising by the selection of particular colours for dresses, 

 ornaments, &c. In this way, flowers of various hues became the 

 apt media of conveying ideas and feelings ; and i^ the ages of 

 chivalry the enamoured knight often indicated his passion by 

 wearing a single blossom or posy of many-hued flowers. In the 

 romance of Perceforet, a hat adorned with Roses is celebrated as a 

 favourite gift of love; and in Amadis de Gaule, the captive Oriana 

 is represented as throwing to her lover a Rose wet with tears, as 

 the sweetest pledge of her unalterable faith. Red was recognised 

 as the colour of love, and therefore the Rose, on account of its 

 tint, was a favourite emblem. Of the various allegorical meanings 

 which were in the Middle Ages attached to this lovely flower, 

 a description will be found in the celebrated Romauut de la Rose, 

 which was commenced in the year 1620 by Guillaume de Lorris, 

 and finished forty years later by Jean de Meung. 



In France, during the Middle Ages, flowers were much em- 

 ployed as emblems of love and friendship. At the banquet given in 

 celebration of the marriage of Charles the Bold, Duke of Bur- 

 gundy, with the English Princess, Margaret, several ingenious auto- 

 mata were introduced, one being a large unicorn, bearing on its 

 back a leopard, which held in one claw the standard of England, 

 and on the other a Daisy, or Marguerite. The unicorn having gone 

 round all the tables, halted before the Duke ; and one of the 

 maitres dlwtel, taking the Dais}' from the leopard's claw, presented 

 it, with a complimentary address, to the royal bridegroom. 



In the same country, an act of homage, unique in its kind, was 

 paid to a lady in the early part of the seventeenth century. The 

 Duke of Montausier, on obtaining the promise of the hand of 

 Mademoiselle de Rambouillet, sent to her, according to custom, 

 every morning till that fixed for the nuptials, a bouquet composed 

 of the finest flowers of the season. But this was not all : on the 

 morning of New Year's Day, 1634 — the day appointed for the 

 marriage — he laid upon her dressing-table a magnificently-bound 

 folio volume, on the parchment leaves of which the most skilful 

 artists of the day had painted from nature a series of the choicest 

 flowers cultivated at that time in Europe. The first p)oets of 

 Paris contributed the poetical illustrations, which were \\Titten by 

 the cleverest penmen under the different flowers. The most 

 celebrated of these madrigals, composed by Chapelain on the 

 Crown Imperial, represented that superb flower as having sprung 

 from the blood of Gustavus Adolphus, who fell in the battle of 



