150 The Wallflower. 



of Paris, not satisfied with the devastation their frenzy occasioned 

 in the capital, fled to St. Denis with an intent to destroy every ves- 

 tige of the royal monuments, and to scatter in the wind the ashes of 

 their sovereigns which were deposited in the sacred abbey at that 

 place. Some time after, this spot was visited by the poet Trenuil, 

 who found heaps of sculptured fragments, which the madness 

 of the rabble had thrown into an obscure court of the abbey, 

 covered over with fragrant Wallflowers, which gave rise to his 

 verses : 



Mais quelle est cette fleur que son instinct pieux 



Sur l'aile du Zephir amine dans ces lieux 1 



&uoi ! tu quittes le temple ou vivent tes racines, 



Sensible Giroflee, amant des mines, 



Et ton tribut fidele accompagne nos rois 1 



Ah puisque la terreur a courb^e sous ses lois 



Du lis infortune la tige souveraine, 



Clue nos jardins en deuil te choisissent pour reine, 



Triomphale sans rivale, et que la sainte fleur 



Croisse pour le tombeau, le trone et le malheur 



TOMBEAUX DE SilNT DENIS. 



The common Wallflower is a native of the South of Europe, 

 and is found wild in Switzerland, France, and Spain ; and we 

 may presume it was one of the earliest of the English cultivated 

 flowers, from its being so constantly found on the ruins of their 

 oldest buildings. It is in the natural order Cruciformes, because 

 the flowers have only four petals, in the form of a cross. The 

 silique is a pod, consisting of two valves and generally one 

 dissepiment extending its whole length ; and the seeds are fixed 

 on both sutures, differing from the legume, where the seeds are 

 fixed on one and the same suture, but alternately between the 

 two valves. The Wallflowers which grow out of the crevices 

 of old buildings are of a much hardier nature than those of the 

 garden, for as they can receive but little moisture by the fibres 

 of their roots, their stem becomes firm and woody, and able to 

 bear the frost without injury; whereas those cultivated in the gar- 

 den become succulent, and consequently more susceptible of 

 cold. The two principal varieties of the Wallflowers are the 

 yellow, and the red or bloody. These, by the intermixture of im- 

 pregnation, have created numerous trivial varieties, as the yellow 

 striped with a reddish brown, or the red striped with yellow. 



