TRE FANSY 
79 
Neither is heart’s- ease a modern appellation merely of 
the flower: John Bunyan represents the guide as saying 
to Christiana and her children, of a boy who was singing 
beside his sheep, Do you hear him ? I will dare to 
say this boy leads a merrier life, and wears more of that 
herb called heart’s-ease in his bosom, than he that is 
clothed in silk and purple.” 
Pansy, one of its oldest names, is a corruption of the 
French word Pensee (thought), “ There’s pansies, that’s 
for thought.” Ben Jonson says — 
“ Now the shining meads 
Do boast the paunse, lily, and the rose, 
And every flower doth laugh as zephyr blows.” 
And this orthography would give the sound of the French 
word much more nearly than our modern mode of writing 
it. 
The name of pensee is still retained in France, and to 
the French this flower conveys a far different meaning 
from that which it bears to us. Its familiar name of 
heart’s-ease renders it to us a pleasing emblem — ^to out 
gay neighbours its name of thought presents a sad one. 
“May they be far from thee,” is a motto affixed to the 
little painted group of pansies, mingled with marigolds 
(called Soucis, cares), which is sometimes given as an 
offering of friendship by a French lady. Alas! for the 
boasted language of flowers ! time and place seem greatly 
to alter its meaning. The very marigolds, which now 
stand as an emblem of care, were in former times said by 
our old herbalist Gerarde, to be “ great comforters of the 
heart.” 
The celebrated Quesnay, founder of the Economists, 
who was physician to Louis XV., was called by that 
monarch his thinker. The great regard which Louis 
had for this nobleman, induced him to devise for him an 
armorial bearing, which consisted of three flowers of the 
pensee. 
Among the pansies which cultivation has so much im- 
proved, the one which seems most deservedly and per- 
manently admired, is the dark purple flower (Viola 
amoena). Its rich petals have a surface like velvet, and 
