64 PROSERPINA. 



stones; 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, im- 

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

 little anxious to know what I meant by saying that modern 

 philosophers did not know the meaning of the v/ord ' 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 conyenient, 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 Csesars," the words gave, to any one who had a 

 clear idea of a Csesar, 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 have been said of a pimpernel, or scarlet geranium ; but 

 of neither of these latter should I have said " robed in purple 

 of Caesars." What I meant was, first, that the poppy leaf 

 looks dyed through and through, like glass, or Tyrian tissue ; 

 and not merely painted : secondly, that the splendour of it is 

 proud, almost insolently so. Augustus, in his glory, might 

 have been clothed like one of these ; and Saul ; but not David 

 nor Solomon ; still less the teacher of Solomon, when He puts 

 on 'glorious apparel* 



3. Let us look, however, at the two translations of the same 

 verse. 



In the vulgate it is " Dominus regnavit ; decorem indutus 

 est ; " He has put on ' becomingness/ decent apparel, rather 

 than glorious. 



In the Septuagint it is euTr/jeTraa we^-becomingnese ; an ex- 



