214 BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 



times divinities and beauties were crowned with chaplets of flowers ; 

 objects of heavenly essence were blended and united with those of 

 earthly love ; flowers graced the altar, the temple, the palace, and the 

 tomb ; and the connection of flowers with the most sacred and vene- 

 rable treasures continues to this day. Wherever a people becomes im- 

 bued with the love of the beautiful, there do they set up shrines, and 

 altars, and images, as visible tokens of invisible things ; and there do 

 they offer flowers as meet sacrifice to propitiate the deities they homage, 

 and to sanctify the loves they cherish, becoming children when they 

 are most truly men. 



Flora was married to Zephyrus, by whom she was passionately be- 

 loved, and she received from him the privilege of presiding over flowers, 

 and of enjoying perpetual youth. Ovid represents her crowned with 

 flowers, and carrying the horn of plenty in her hand. She dwells 

 amid the green foliage of the forest, whence she comes forth in her 

 magic car, attended with a train of flowers, exquisite forms of per- 

 fumed loveliness "in tender hues of rainbow lustre dyed." 



In her leafy car 



Flora descends to dress the expecting earth, 



Awake the germs, and call the buds to birth ; 



Bids each hybernacle its cell unfold, 



And open silken leaves and eyes of gold. 

 " The worship of Flora, among the heathen nations, may be traced 

 up to very early days. She was the object of religious veneration 

 among the Phocians and the Sabines, long before the foundation of 

 Rome ; and the early Greeks worshipped her under the name of 

 Chloris. The Romans instituted a festival in honour of Flora as early 

 as the time of Romulus, as a kind of rejoicing at the appearance of 

 the blossoms, which they welcomed as the harbingers of fruits. The 

 festival games of Floralia were not, however, regularly instituted until 

 five hundred and sixteen years after the foundation of Rome, when, on 

 consulting the celebrated books of the Sybil, it was ordained that the 

 feast should be annually kept on the 28th day of April, that is, four 

 days before the calends of May." 



" The taste for flowers came to Rome from the East j garlands were 

 suspended at the gates or in the temples, where feasts or solemn re- 

 joicings were held, and at all places where public joy and gaiety were 

 desired."* Flowers became a necessary part in all their festivals? 



* Phillips's Floral Emblem s , 



