He commends them also as being very salutary : — 
“Malvae salubres corpori.” 
It grows, naturally, by the rivulet’s side, and is of easy culture. Its appearance is graceful and 
pleasing; and its rose-coloured flowers harmonize with its leaves and branches, the whole plant being co- 
vered with a silver-coloured silky down. It is equally agreeable to the sight as to the touch. Its flowers, 
its stalks, its leaves, and its roots, are all useful. We procure from them various juices, syrups, pastiles, and 
pastes, alike beneficial to health, and agreeable to the palate. 
A kind ofpaste, called by the French name of pate de mauve, was of late prepared from the root, which is 
thought to be efficacious in allaying the irritation produced by violent coughing ; but at present the Mallow 
is omitted, that the composition may have a fine white colour; it is, therefore, now made only of the finest 
white gum-arabic, the white of eggs, sugar, and orange-flower water. 
The Mallow was formerly planted, with some other flowers, the asphodel in particular, around the 
graves of departed friends. It was probably this circumstance which led to the following reflections, in the 
epitaph on Bion, by Mosehus: — 
“ Raise, raise the dirge, Muses of Sicily ? 
Alas ! when mallows in the garden die , 
Green parsley, or the crisp luxuriant dill, 
They live again, and flower another year ; 
Put we, how great soe’er, or strong, or wise, 
When once we die, sleep in the senseless earth, 
A long, an endless, unawakeable sleep.” 
Hunt’s Foliage. 
The common Mallow of this country must be familiar even to London readers ; it is an amiable plant, 
generally to be found in spots neglected by mankind. 
“ The mallow purpling o’er the pleasant sides 
Of pathways green.” 
Dr. Bidlake. 
“We call,” says a delightful author, “upon the admirers of the good and beautiful to help us 
in ‘rescuing nature from obloquy.’ All you that are lovers of nature in books, — lovers of music, painting, 
and poetry, — lovers of sweet sounds, and odours, and colours, and all the eloquent and happy face of the 
rural world with its eyes of sunshine,— you, that are lovers of your species, of youth, and health, and old 
age, — of manly strength in the manly, of nymph-like graces in the female, — of air, of exercise, of happy 
currents in your veins, — of the light in great nature’s picture, — of all the gentle spiriting, the loveliness, the 
luxury, that now stands under the smile of heaven, silent and solitary as your fellow-creatures have left it, — 
go forth on May-day, or on the earliest fine May morning, if that be not fine, and pluck your flowers and 
your green boughs to adorn your rooms with, and to show that you do not live in vain. These April rains 
(for May has not yet come, according to the old style, which is the proper one of our climate,) these April 
rains are fetching forth the full luxury of the trees and hedges; — by the next sunshine, all c the green 
weather/ as a little gladsome child called it, will have come again; the hedges will be so many thick verdant 
walls, the fields mossy carpets, the trees clothed to their finger-tips with foliage, the birds saturating the 
woods with song. Come forth, come forth.” 
This was the great rural festival of our forefathers. Their hearts responded merrily to the cheerfulness 
of the season. At the dawn of May morning the lads and lasses left their towns and villages, and repairing 
to the woodlands by sound of music, they gathered the May, or blossomed branches of the trees, and bound 
them with wreaths of flowers; then returning to their homes by sunrise, they decorated the lattices and' 
doors with the sweet-smelling spoil of their joyous journey, and spent the remaining hours in sports and 
pastimes. 
In the language of Flowers, the Mallow is the emblem of a mild or sweet disposition* 
