204 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 



of antiquity. The plant now known as the asphodel 

 grows in great profusion everywhere in Southern 

 Europe. It is a kind of lily our dear old English 

 word daffodil being but a corruption of it distin- 

 guished by its thick tuft of long narrow leaves, out of 

 which rises a tall rod covered with white star-like 

 flowers, whose petals are streaked with purple lines. It 

 is a majestic flower, and gives a fine effect to the fore- 

 ground of an Italian landscape. Whether this was the 

 Homeric asphodel which blossomed early across the 

 Styx, and which the Greeks planted in their graveyards 

 as food for the Shades, we do not know, but it is cer- 

 tainly worthy of such a destiny. It has a grey spectral 

 gleam when seen in misty weather ; and even in the 

 clear garish noon its spire of blossoms seems to have 

 derived its silvery sheen from the cold moonbeams, 

 rather than from the warm sunshine. A bare hillside 

 covered with its dark green grassy tufts and ghostly 

 flowers looks like a bit of extra-mundane scenery. 



The amaranth is involved in still deeper obscurity. 

 The flower known to the classic poets, we believe, how- 

 ever, to be the Gomphrena globosa, as its round flowers 

 of a deep purple resembling those of the common 

 clover, produced on long stiff stalks bare of leaves, 

 answer better than any other species the description of 

 Pliny. The calyx of this globe-amaranth which consti- 

 tutes the flower, is of so dry a texture that it seems 

 dead even while it is growing ; and it is to this fine thin 

 membranous texture that the flower owes its glossy 

 beauty, and its persistent endurance. It was a favourite 



