THE ASSOCIATIONS OF FLOWERS 253 



them in decoration. There are so many competitors 

 for our affections that we are bewildered among them; 

 and before any associations have gathered about one 

 novelty we are distracted to another. We have no 

 right to complain of our riches, and no doubt in time 

 the novelties will be exhausted, and only the best of 

 them will be kept. Then they will begin to gather 

 associations about them and to get beautiful names, 

 and to pass into decoration and poetry and legend. 

 But at present it would be almost as difficult to make 

 a good pattern out of Incarvillea Delavayi, beautiful 

 as it is, as to introduce its name into poetry. The 

 flower, like the name, has no associations for us yet; 

 we admire, but do not love it. It must grow in our 

 gardens for a long while before its image can grow in 

 our minds; and decoration is made of mental images 

 rather than of imitations of particular objects. In 

 the same way the felicitous names of flowers express 

 ideas of flowers that have grown up in men's minds 

 slowly and with long association. No doubt they are 

 often invented in a happy flash of fancy; sometimes 

 they are expressive corruptions of an inexpressive 

 original; but in any case they are not accepted un- 

 less they express the common idea of a flower. And 

 that idea is made, not only by the peculiar character 

 of its beauty, but by all the associations and the 

 romance that have gathered about it, not only by 

 its own life, but by its connexion with the life of men. 

 We cannot tell why this connexion should be estab- 

 lished more in the case of some flowers than of others 



