100 BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 



cone, and punctuated on the top with little cavities or cells, in which 

 the seeds grow. The seeds, when ripe, are prevented from escaping, 

 in consequence of the orifices of the cells heing too small, and so they 

 germinate in the places where they ripen, and shoot forth into new 

 plants, until they acquire such a degree of magnitude, as to burst the 

 matrice open and release themselves ; after which, like other aquatic 

 plants, they take root where the current chances to deposit them. 

 This apparently self-productive plant became the symbol of the re- 

 })roductive power of all nature, and was worshipped as a symbol of 

 the All-Creative-Power, — the spirit which " moved upon the face of 

 the waters," and which gave life and organization to matter. We 

 find the same symbol occurring in every part of the Northern hemi- 

 sphere where symbolic religion has prevailed. The sacred images of 

 the Tartars, Japanese, and Indians are almost all represented as rest- 

 ing upon the lotos leaves. The Chinese divinity, Puzza, is seated on 

 a lotos, and the Japanese God is represented sitting on a water-lily. 

 The flatterers of Adrian, emperor of Rome, after the death of his 

 favourite Antinous, endeavoured to persuade him that the young man 

 was metamorphosed into a lotos flower ; but the emperor created a 

 temple to his memory, and wished it to be believed that he had been 

 changed into a constellation. The plant is poetically described in the 

 Heltopades, as " The cooling flower, which is oppressed by the ap- 

 pearance of day, and afraid of the stars ;"* — in allusion to the cir- 

 cumstance of its spreading its flowers only in the night. There is a 

 beautiful passage in the Sacontala in reference to the palmistry of the 

 Brahmin priests. "What!" exclaims a prophetic Brahmin, "the 

 very palm of his hand bears the mark of empire, and, while he thus 

 eagerly extends it, shows its lines of exquisite net-work, and grows 

 like a lotos expanded at early dawn, when the ruddy splendour of its 

 petals hides all other tints in obscurity." f 



" This is the sublime, the hallowed symbol, that eternally occurs in 

 oriental mythology ; and in truth not without substantial reason, for 

 it is itself a lovely prodigy ; it contains a treasure of physical instruc- 

 tion, and aflbrds to the enraptured botanist exhaustless matter of 

 amusement and contemplation. No wonder, therefore, that the phi- 

 losophizing sons of Mizriam adorned their majestic structures with 

 the spreading tendrils of this vegetable, and made the ample expand- 



* Heltopades, p. 282. 

 t Sacontala, p. 89. 



