98 PROSERPINA. 



and understood that poppies did not mingle their 

 scarlet among the gold, without some purpose of 

 the poppy-Maker that they should be looked at. 



Nevertheless, with respect to the good and 

 polite German's poetically-contemplated, and finely 

 aesthetic, tea, may it not be asked whether poppy 

 leaves themselves, like the bread and butter, are not, 

 if we may venture an opinion — too thin, — \m-properly 

 thin ? In the last chapter, my reader was, I hope, a 

 little anxious to know what I meant by saying that 

 modern philosophers did not know the meaning of 

 the word ' proper,' and may wish to know what I 

 mean by it myself. And this I think it needful to 

 explain before going farther. 



2. In our English prayer-book translation, the first 

 verse of the ninety-third Psalm runs thus : " The 

 Lord is King ; and hath put on glorious apparel." 

 And although, in the future republican world, there 

 are to be no lords, no kings, and no glorious apparel, 

 it will be found convenient, for botanical purposes, 

 to remember what such things once were ; for when 

 I said of the poppy, in last chapter, that it was 

 " robed in the purple of the Caesars," the words gave, 

 to any one who had a clear idea of a Caesar, and of 

 his dress, a better, and even stricter, account of the 

 flower than if I had only said, with Mr. Sowerby, 

 " petals bright scarlet ; " which might just as well 



