FLORAL SYMBOLS, 

 IN TWO PARTS. 



PART II. 



The rose has been a symbolic flower in every age of the world. It 

 has been the universal symbol of beauty and love ; the half-expanded 

 bud representing the first dawn of the sublime passion, and the full- 

 blown flower being an emblem of the matured love, which, when it 

 ripens in the heart of a devoted woman, gives her a nobility and 

 grace only equalled by the angels, and renders her sacred to one in 

 fond and constant attachment. It gives new life and enchantment to 

 her beauty, and sheds a heavenly light upon the domestic hearth, and 

 hallows all who come within its influence. The rose is the delight 

 of the East, the eternal theme of the poet, and the emblem of all 

 virtue and loveliness. The Romans, whose profuse use of flowers 

 subjected them to the reproofs of their philosophers, considered the 

 rose as an emblem of festivity. The Egyptians made it a symbol of 

 silence, and crowned Harpocrates with a garland of its blossoms. 



The classical story of the death of the beautiful youth. Hyacinth, 

 has rendered that flower an emblem of grief. It is very probable, 

 however, that the hyacinth of the ancients was the red lily, called 

 the Martagon lily, or Turk's cap. Yirgil describes the flower as of a 

 bright red colour, and as being marked with the Greek exclamation 

 of grief, AI, AI, and which may be faintly traced in the black marks 

 of the Turk's cap. Milton speaks of this as 



That sanguine flower inscribed with woe, 



and as there are no such marks upon the wood hyacinth, that plant 

 has been called Syacinthus non scriptus (not inscribed). The Eastern 

 poets have made the hyacinth subserve many poetical uses. By 

 Hafiz it was adopted as the symbol of elegance and grace, and he 

 delighted to compare his mistress's hair to its blossoms ; hence the 

 term, — hyacinthine locks, which was originally an Oriental com- 



