96 RESPECT PAID TO VERVAIN. 



cultured places, it fixes its residence by way-sides, 

 and old stone quarries, thriving under the feet of 

 every passing creature. The celebrity that this 

 plant obtained in very remote times, without its 

 possessing one apparent quality, or presenting by 

 its manner of growth, or form, any mysterious cha- 

 racter to arrest the attention, or excite imagina- 

 tion, is very extraordinary, and perhaps unaccount- 

 able : most nations venerated, esteemed, and used 

 it; the ancients had their Verbenalia, at which 

 period the temples and frequented places were 

 strewed and sanctified with vervain 3 the beasts for 

 sacrifice, and the altars, were verbenated, the one 

 filleted, the other strewed, with the sacred herb ; 

 no incantation or lustration was perfect without the 

 aid of this plant. That mistletoe should have 

 excited attention in days of darkness and ignorance, 

 is not a subject of surprise, from the extraordinary 

 and obscure manner of its growth and propagation, 

 and the season of the year in which it flourishes ; 

 for even the great lord Bacon ridicules the idea of 

 its being propagated by the operations of a bird as 

 an "idle tradition," saying, that the sap which 

 produces this plant is such as the " tree doth ex- 

 cerne and cannot assimilate.' ' These circumstances, 

 and its great dissimilarity from the plant on which 

 it vegetates, all combine to render it a subject of 

 superstitious wonder : but that a lowly, ineffective 

 herb like our vervain, should have stimulated the 



