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FAMILIAR WILL FLOWERS. 



The heart's-ease was formerly in great repute as a 

 remedy in asthma, epilepsy, pleurisy, and many other 

 ailments. As the plant was also considered a cordial, and 

 efficacious in diseases of the heart, it has been by some 

 writers supposed that its name, heart's-ease, really owes its 

 origin to no such poetical association of ideas as is 

 ordinarily imagined, but that it is simply a testimony to 

 the plant's curative powers. The balance of evidence 

 however, in the writings of our poets goes far to outweigh 

 this idea. Numerous passages from Spenser, Chaucer, 

 Shakespeare, Milton, and the writings of lesser men, might 

 easily be brought forward did space permit, and it would 

 then readily, we think, be felt that the poetical associations 

 very considerably outweighed the medical that the 

 hearts-ease was no mere absence of bodily pain, but a 

 considerably more subtle presence and possession, alto- 

 gether beyond the power of pill or potion to produce or to 

 destroy. 



