CHAPTER IV. 



THE FLOWER. 



ROME, Whit Monday , 1874. 



1. ON the quiet road leading from under the Palatine to 

 the little church of St. Nereo and Achilleo, I met, yester- 

 day morning, group after group of happy peasants heaped 

 in pyramids on their triumphal carts, in Whit-Sunday dress, 

 stout and clean, and gay in colour ; and the women all with 

 bright artificial roses in their hair, set with true natural 

 taste, and well becoming them. This power of arranging 

 wreath or crown of flowers for the head, remains to the 

 people from classic times. And the thing that struck me 

 most in the look of it was not so much the cheerfulness, 

 as the dignity ; in a true sense, the becomingness and 

 decorousness of the ornament. Among the ruins of the 

 dead city, and the worse desolation of the work of its mod- 

 ern rebuilders, here was one element at least of honour, 

 and order ; and, in these, of delight. 



And these are the real significances of the flower itself. 

 It is the utmost purification of the plant, and the utmost 

 discipline. / Where its tissue is blanched fairest, dyed 

 purest, set i& strictest rank, appointed to most chosen office. 



