57 
And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow, 
As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts. 
But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft 
Quench'd in the chaste beams of the wat'ry moon. 
And the imperial vot'ress passed on. 
In maiden meditation, fancy-free. 
Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell: 
It fell upon a little western flower, 
Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound, 
And maidens call it Love in Idleness. 
The juice of it, on sleeping eyelids laid. 
Will make or man or woman madly doat 
Upon the next live creature that it sees. 
Shakspeare. 
In the year 1815, this flower furnished occasion 
for a tragi-comic occurrence in France. A school- 
master in a provincial town had proposed as a theme 
for his pupils a description of the Viola Tricolor. 
and given them as a motto the following passage 
from a Latin poem by Father Rapin, entitled " The 
Gardens :" 
Flosque Jovis varius, folii tricoloris, et ipsi 
Par viols. 
The mayor of the town was informed of the cir- 
cumstance ; and, taking it into his head that the 
object of the schoolmaster was to excite insurrection 
against the government of the lately-restcred Louis 
