132 PROSERPINA. 



ties, or induced by horticulture, may be named as they please 

 by the people living near the spot, or b} r the gardener who 

 grows them ; but will not be acknowledged by Proserpina. 

 Nevertheless, the arbitrary reduction under Ordines, Gentes, 

 and Familise, is always to be remembered as one of massive 

 practical convenience only ; and the more subtle arbores- 

 cence of the infinitely varying structures may be followed, 

 like a human genealogy, as far as we please, afterwards ; when 

 once we have got our common plants clearly arranged and 

 intelligibly named. 



22. But now we find ourselves in the presence of a new 

 difficulty, the greatest we have to deal with in the whole 

 matter. 



One new nomenclature, to be thoroughly good, must be 

 acceptable to scholars in the five great languages, Greek, 

 Latin, French, Italian, and English ; and it must be accepta- 

 ble by them in teaching the native children of each country. 

 I shall not be satisfied, unless I can feel that the little maids 

 who gather their first violets under the Acropolis rock, may 

 receive for them JEschylean words again with joy. I shall 

 not be content, unless the mothers watching their children at 

 play in the Ceramicus of Paris, under the scarred ruins of her 

 Kings' palace, may yet teach them there to know the flowers 

 which the Maid of Orleans gathered at Domremy. I shall 

 not be satisfied unless every word I ask from the lips of the 

 children of Florence and Rome, may enable them better to 

 praise the flowers that are chosen by the hand of Matilda,* 

 and bloom around the tomb of Virgil. 



23. Now in this first example of nomenclature, the Master- 

 name, being pure Greek, may easily be accepted by Greek 

 children, remembering that certain also of their own poets, if 

 they did not call the flower a Grace itself, at least thought of 

 it as giving gladness to the Three in their dances, f But for 

 French children the word ' Grace ' has been doubly and trebly 

 corrupted ; first, by entirely false theological scholarship, 



* " Cantando, e scegliendo fior di fiore 



Onde era picta tutta la sua via." Purg., xxviii. 35. 

 " /cat 



