MAY. 139 



is unquestionably eastern. Perhaps the warmer 

 countries of Europe are less in the use of them 

 than they were formerly. Boccaccio talks of 

 them being disposed even in bed-chambers: 

 " E nelle earner e i letti fatti, e ogni cosa di 

 fiori, quali nella stagione si potevano avere, pi- 

 ena :" and at the table of the narrators of the 

 Decameron stories, as " Ogni cosa di fiori di 

 ginestra coperta." In England they are much 

 less used than on the Continent, and much less 

 than they were by our ancestors. On May- 

 day, at Whitsuntide, and on other holiday oc- 

 casions, the houses were profusely decorated 

 with them, and they were strewn before the 

 door. Over the extinction of many popular 

 customs I cannot bring myself to grieve ; but 

 there is something so pure and beautiful in the 

 plentiful use of flowers, that I cannot but la- 

 ment the decay of these. Perhaps the most 

 touching of our popular uses of flowers is that 

 of strewing the dead with them, designating the 

 age, sex, or other particular circumstances, by 

 different flowers. How expressive in the hand 

 of a fair young girl, cut off in her early spring, 

 are a few pure and drooping snow-drops, an 

 image exquisitely employed by Chantrey in his 



