98 FLOWERS AND FRUITS. 



colors, all their qualities summon up those sweet emotions which 

 enrich beauty and impart to youth a divine grace. Albano was 

 unable to blend upon the palette which love had confided to him, 

 colors sufficiently soft and delicate to convey the peculiarly beau- 

 tiful tints that adorn the human face in early youth ; Van Spaendock 

 himself, laid down his pencil in despair, before a bunch of lilac. 

 Nature seems to have aimed to produce massy bunqhes of these 

 flowers, every part of which should astonish by its delicacy and 

 variety. The gradation of color, from the purple bud to the 

 almost colorless flowers, is ithe least charm of these beautiful 

 groups, around which the light plays, and produces a thousand 

 shades, which all blending toother in the same tint, form that 

 matchless harmony which the painter despairs to imitate and the 

 most indifferent observer delights ^to behold. What labor has 

 Nature bestowed to create this fragile shrub, which seems only 

 given for the gratification of the senses. What a union of perfume, 

 of freshness, of grace and of delicacy ! What variety in detail ! 

 What beauty as a whole ! 



The generic name is derived from the Turkish word that signi- 

 fies a pipe, on account of the stems of their most costly and 

 favorite pipes being made out of the roots of some of this species. 

 We also borrow our common name for the plant from the east, 

 for LILAC is a Persian word, meaning a flower expressive of 

 admiration, as if we should write flower, with an exclamation point 

 after it. 



" The Lilac, various in array, now white, 

 Now sanguine, and her beauteous head now set, 

 With purple spikes, pyramidal, as if, 

 * Studious of ornament, yet unresolved 



Which hue she most approved, she chose them all." 



