224 
BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 
symbols of the ancient nations have elucidated some of 
the most difficult questions concerning their history, and 
have made it certain, that most of the Indian, and 
Egyptian customs originated in Chaldea—that land of 
serene and tranquil skies, where human society had its 
origin, and where the observation of nature first grew 
into a science, in the earliest ages of the world. 
The rose has been a symbolic flower in every age of 
the w r orld. It has been the universal symbol of beauty 
and love; the half-expanded bud representing the first 
dawn of the sublime passion, and the full-blown flower 
the matured sentiment which sheds a heavenly light upon 
the domestic hearth, and hallows all who come within 
its influence. The rose is the delight of the East, the 
eternal theme of the poet, and the emblem of the highest 
virtues. The Romans, whose profuse use of flowers 
subjected them to the reproofs of their philosophers, 
considered the rose as an emblem of festivity. The 
Egyptians made it a symbol of silence, and crowned 
Ilarpocrates with a garland of its blossoms. 
The classical story of the death of the beautiful youth, 
Hyacinth, has rendered that flower an emblem of grief. 
It is very probable, however, that the hyacinth of the 
ancients was the red lily, called the Martagon lily, or 
Turk's cap. Virgil describes the flower as of a bright 
red colour, and as being marked with the Greek 
exclamation of grief, AI, AI, and which may be faintly 
traced in the black marks of the Turk's cap, Milton 
speaks of this as 
“ That sanguine flower, inscribed with woe;” 
and as there are no such marks upon the wood hyacinth, 
