l^LAKTS CHARACTERISTIC OF ITALY. 99 



whose name was well known on the Riviera. x'\fter his 

 death others built this Gothic house in the garden 'v^-hich 

 he created, ^ye now reach the Italian "Dogana''. Night 

 is drawing on and in Mentone lights are beginning to 

 appear in the houses and the streets. The strand is soon 

 picked out with points of light, fringing the sea like a 

 necklace of i'levy pearls. The lines of the "Mignonlied" 

 passed through mv mind, and the rh\thmic \\ asliing of 

 the waves seemed to recall the music of Beethoven's beau- 

 tiful accompaniment. It is significant that those plants, 

 which in this song of Goethe's conjure up in our minds 

 such vivid pictures of Itah", are not indigenous in that 

 land, which has been cultivated for over two thousand 

 \'ears. The\- came from the East, like all the great ideas 

 on which our culture is founded, and were developed and 

 improved on this classic soil. Itah- received the Lemon 

 and Orange from the Semites, who in their turn had obtained 

 them from India. The Olive, the Fig, the \Tne and the 

 Palm were grown bv the Semites lone before their culti- 

 vation penetrated to the West. The Laurel and Myrtle 

 indeed are indigenous in Itah', but their use tor cerem.on- 

 ial purposes came across the Mediterranean from tlie East. 

 The home of the Cypress is not in Itah' but in the Greek 

 archipelago, northern Persia, Cilicia and Lebanon. And 

 it has even been questioned, though in this case without 

 reason, whether the "Umbrella Pine", which almost seems 

 to have taken the cloud-cap of V^esuvius as its model, 

 is an Italian plant. As though the great impulse given 

 to horticulture by the discovery of America were also 

 destined to leave its imprint upon Italian soil, the Agave 



