2 FLAX. 



every tiling which surrounds it. Its wood, which is as 

 poor as its branches are liberal, indicates the generosity 

 and unselfishness which belongs to all genuine friendship 

 and brotherhood. Its fruit comes in aid of all our neces- 

 sities, and is wholesome to every constitution. Its juice 

 excites to friendly confidence, and, like sincere friendship, 

 it improves with time. By its shade, its grapes, and the 

 wine they give, the vine is acknowledged to be the 

 universal favourite of all nations, ages, and epochs. 



Both the vine and flax are most benevolent gifts from 

 the hand of a bountiful Creator. But while the former 

 symbolises ease and joy, flax is the emblem of temperance 

 and love, combined with patience, labour, and economy. 

 The one enhances the pleasures of the wealthy and the 

 gay, not refusing meanwhile to solace the griefs of the 

 aged, the downcast, and the heavily afflicted; the other 

 enables the children of labour to look forward to a sure 

 but hard-earned meal, and that seems its principal 

 mission on earth ; while it still condescends, through 

 their instrumentality, to adorn the high-born dames of 

 princes. The fastidious vine restricts its dwelling to the 

 most favoured regions of the earth ; the hardier and cos- 

 mopolitan flax boldly flourishes, and cheerfully displays 

 its delicate blossoms, under the three months' summer 

 of a northern sky, as well as beneath the unchanging 

 uniformity of equinoctial light and darkness. " Elax and 

 hemp," says Olivier de Serres, " are of extremest value 

 to man, both in sickness and in health, in life, and even 

 in death." The Scriptures make the flame of flaxen fibre 

 the type of the short and ephemeral duration of all 

 human joys and sorrows. " A bruised reed shall he not 

 break, and smoking flax shall he not quench." (Matt, 

 xii. 20.) That is, he will forbear to extinguish so brief a 

 light as that of flax already smoking and half burnt out. 

 At the coronation of the newly-elected pope, a crier 

 walks in the procession before him, lighting from time to 

 time small tufts of flax at a taper in his hand, and shout- 

 ing as each last spark dies out, " Holy Father, thus 

 passeth away the glory of all earthly things." But 



