318 WILD FLOWERS. 







fully preserved in the belief that they would remain 

 fresh for weeks, if those to whom their wearers had 

 given their young hearts were worthy of the boon 

 so confidingly entrusted to them ; but they were 

 sure to fade if the lovers became inconstant and 

 faithless;* a belief which it were very prosaic 

 to term a mere superstition, since we cannot but 

 suppose that a lover of sixteen would take special 

 care that the flax blossoms of his chosen one should 

 not be seen in a faded state, so long as the fields 

 continued to supply him with the means of renew- 

 ing them unobserved. We might almost lament 

 that customs so perfectly innocent, and so simple in 

 their nature, should become extinct as a consequence 

 of the dawn of a higher and brighter era of civiliza- 

 tion ; for however we, who take a truer view of life, 

 may scorn the follies of the sentimentalist with his 

 "language of flowers/' and his petty and languid 

 appropriation of vapid and insignificant meanings 

 to the works of his Creator, yet there is, in truth, 

 more of affinity between young and trusting hearts, 

 and their best emblems, bright and delicate flowers, 

 than those who have faced the bitterness and the 

 struggle of longer life will always acknowledge. 

 The custom of attributing particular meanings to 

 flowers has been common in all ages, and in many 

 countries, and as the Welsh, Germans, and others, 

 consider the flax and other blue flowers to be 

 emblematic of friendship from their resembling the 

 heavens in colour, so the predilection of the ancient 

 Egyptians for flax was supposed by some to have 

 * Villeruarque's " Chansons Populaires." 



