322 THE AESTHETICS OF 



The solemn and lasting Cypress decked, among the Greeks, 

 the graves of the beloved, and the meadows of the Homeric 

 Infernal world were alive with the blue Asphodelos, the 

 light blossoms of which rising again each Spring from the 

 bulb buried in the earth, told of an eternal revival, a certain 

 immortality. On the still waters of the blessing Nile, the 

 animating influence of the sun-god Osiris called forth from 

 the all-supporting Isis flood, the luxuriant Lotus flower, 

 scattering in their great almond-like seeds, ready food for 

 the oldest races of mankind, and with grateful feelings was 

 this plant consecrated to that mild Divinity ; it even became 

 the symbol of Fertility, the Force of development in 

 Nature, so full of blessings, and after the absolute neces- 

 sities came to be satisfied in other ways, the use of this 

 fruit, as holy, was forbidden to dust-born Man ; Pythagoras 

 also, together with the wisdom of the Egyptian priests, 

 promulgated among his scholars the prohibition from eating 

 these beans. Athene, the goddess of the serene air, gave 

 to the Greeks the Olive, which loves to dwell in sunny 

 habitations, and the moistener of shores, Poseidon, crowned 

 his brow with the shoots of the Shore-Pine,* consecrated 

 to him. 



The union between living contemplation of Nature and 

 dead philological scholarship is, alas ! too new to admit a 

 possibility of tracing the symbolization of the vegetable 

 world, through every form of Divine worship that has 

 existed among the various races of mankind. Those very 

 sides of the old religious Myths have up to the most recent 

 times, been most neglected, in which their connection with 

 the life of Nature is expressed, in which therefore would 

 have been found the surest means to their explanation and 



* Pinus maritima. " Poseidons Pine Grove." 



