FLORAL CEREMONIES. 



" Bring, FLORA, bring thy treasures here, 

 The pride of all the blooming year, 

 And let me thence a garland frame." SHENSTONB. 



" THE worship of FLORA," says MR. PHIL- 

 LIPS, " among the heathen nations, may be 

 traced up to very early days. She was the 

 ohject of religious veneration among the Pho- 

 cians and the Sabines, long before the foundation 

 of Rome ; and the early Greeks worshipped her 

 under the name of Chloris. The Romans in- 

 stituted a festival in honor of flora as early as 

 the time of Romulus, as a kind of rejoicing at 

 the appearance of the blossoms, which they 

 welcomed as the harbingers of fruits. The 

 festival games of Floralia, were not however, 

 regularly instituted until five hundred and six^ 

 teen years after the foundation of Rome, when 

 on consulting the celebrated books of the Sybil, 

 10* 113 



