44 BOOK OF THE SCENTED GARDEN 
and child knows the names of the herbs, and most adults 
are acquainted with their medicinal values. Fever looms 
large before the minds of the poor Sicilians, though 
really the island is not at all malarious when compared 
with Sardinia. Ifor one should be sorry to see the faith 
in herbs die out in Sicily ; it is one of the most medieval 
touches in this last refuge of the Middle Ages” (p. 278, 
vol; i.). 
New the Convent of the Cappuccini and the Latomia 
or rock prison at Syracuse are ‘“‘huge bushes of 
Rosemary on which the laundress dries her linen with- 
out any thought of the aroma, and in front of the 
Villa Polita are the finest wild stocks I ever saw, 
filling the air with rich and tender fragrance” (p. 148, 
vol: 1.). 
. the Catholic mystics of the Middle Ages made 
of material things such as sweet flowers an allegory of 
the spiritual and the immaterial. Of Suso, for example, 
we read :—‘‘ Thus he kept carnival, and thus on New 
Year’s night when young men in their folly go out to 
make their sweethearts give them garlands, he too would 
go to his eternal love and beg of Him a wreath. So too 
on May Day Eve he would set up a spiritual May-tree, 
saying—‘ Hail, heavenly May-bough of the Eternal 
Wisdom!’ I offer thee to-day in place of red Roses, 
a heartfelt love; for every little Violet, a lowly inclina- 
tion; for all Lilies, a pure embrace; for all flowers of 
heath or down; forest or plain, tree or meadow, a 
spiritual kiss; for all songs of little birds on a May 
Day flight, praises without end.”—AEdinburgh Review, 
July to October 1896, vol. clxxxiv. p. 314. 
In the natural woods at Cap Martin and elsewhere 
along the Riviera the natural woods are full of aromatic 
shrubs and sweeted plants of other kinds. Rue, Rose- 
mary, Myrtle, Lentiscus (Pistachia), and Thyme, being 
especially abundant and grateful, filling the genial 
