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HAKSPEARE tells as that “ fairies use flowers for 
their charactery,” and so, he might have added, do 
mortals, for the language of flowers is almost as ancient 
and universal a one as that of speech. 
The Chinese, whose chronicles antedate the historic 
records of all other nations, have, and ever seem to have 
had, a simple but complete mode of communicating 
ideas by means of florigraphic signs. The indestruct¬ 
ible monuments of the mighty Assyrian and Egyptian 
races bear upon their venerable surfaces a code of floral 
telegraphy that Time has been powerless to efface, but 
whose hieroglyphical meaning is veiled, or, at the best,, 
but dimly guessed at in our day. India, whose civilization had 
attained its full vigour whilst that of Greece was in its cradle, 
has ever been poetically ingenious in finding in her magnificent 
Flora significations applicable to human interest. Biblical lore 
abounds in comparisons between “the golden stars that in 
earth’s firmament do shine,” and the feelings and passions of 
poor mortality. Persian poetry is replete with blossomy similes; 
whilst the mythology of the Greeks has been an apparently in¬ 
exhaustible storehouse to all authors in search of floral fancies. 
With the Elellenic race the symbolic language of flowers reached 
its culminating point of grandeur; and with the decline of 
Grecian glory faded away the brightest epoch in the history 
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