FLORAL CEREMONIES. 
“ Bring, Flora, bring thy treasures here, 
The pride of all the blooming year, 
And let me thenee a garland frame.” 
Shenstone. 
“ The worship of Flora,” says Mr. Phillips, 
among the heathen nations, may be traced up 
to very early days. She was the object of re- 
ligious veneration among the Procians and 
the Sabines, long before the foundation of 
Rome ; and the early Greeks worshipped her 
under the name of CHLORIS. The Romans 
instituted a festival in honour of Flora as 
early as the time of Romulus, as a kind of re- 
joicing at the appearance of the blossoms, 
which they welcomed as the harbingers of 
fruits. The festival games of Flo RALIA were 
not, however, regularly instituted until five 
hundred and sixteen years after the founda- 
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