118 PEOSERPINA. 



take it on the coins of St. George for the symbol of the 

 splendour or light of heaven, which is dearest where hum- 

 blest. 



2. Now these great two orders of which the types are 

 the thyme and the daisy you are to remember generally 

 as the ' Herbs ' and the ' Sunflowers.' You are not to call 

 them Lipped flowers, nor Composed flowers ; because the 

 first is a vulgar term ; for when you once come to be able 

 to draw a lip, or, in noble duty, to kiss one, you will know 

 that no other flower in earth is like that : and the second 

 is an indefinite term ; for a foxglove is as much a c com- 

 posed ' flower as a daisy ; but it is composed in the shape 

 of a spire, instead of the shape of the sun. And again a 

 thistle, which common botany calls a composed flower, as 

 well as a daisy, is composed in quite another shape, being 

 on the whole, bossy instead of flat ; and of another tem- 

 per, or composition of mind, also, being connected in that 

 respect with butterburs, and a vast company of rough, 

 knotty, half-black or brown, and generally unluminous 

 flowers I can scarcely call them and weeds I will not, 

 creatures, at all events, in nowise to be gathered under 

 the general name ' Composed,' with the stars that crown 

 Chaucer's Alcestis, when she returns to the day from the 

 dead. 



But the wilder and stronger blossoms of the Hawk's- 

 eye again you see I refuse for them the word weed ; 

 and the waste-loving Chicory, which the Venetians call 

 c Sponsa solis," are all to be held in one class with the 



