Magnolia. 
117 
had it transported to Paris, where it still exists, full of years 
and honours ; not, however, without having had many narrow 
escapes from total destruction by fire, sword, and other dan¬ 
gerous enemies. Although upwards of a hundred years old, it 
produces annually somewhere about four hundred large, ele¬ 
gant, and sweet-scented flowers. 
In China and Japan the magnolia is highly valued ; and in 
the former country they are most carefully cultivated in the 
gardens of the emperor and by all those who can afford them. 
A magnolia in flower is considered a handsome gift for the 
emperor, even from the governor of a province. 
So powerful is the fragrance of this flower that, it is said, a 
single blossom of it placed in a bed-room suffices to cause 
death, even in one night. English poets are not sufficiently 
familiar with the magnolia to pay it that homage which its 
loveliness deserves. In Tighe’s poem of “ The Rose,” the poet, 
in exalting the beauty of that Queen of Flowers, says 
“Less-prized gardenia drops her lucid bells, 
And rich magnolias close their purple globes.” 
And Wordsworth alludes thus to this flower: 
“He spoke of plants divine and strange, “He told of the magnolia, spread 
That every hour their blossoms change High as a cloud, high overhead ; 
Ten thousand lovely hues ! The cypress and her spire ; 
With budding, fading, faded flowers, Of flowers that with one scarlet gleam 
They stand the wonder of the bowers Cover a hundred leagues, and seem 
From morn to evening dews. To set the hills on fire.” 
Chateaubriand, in his romance of “Atala,” referring to an 
Indian superstition which supposes that the souls of departed 
infants enter into flowers, thus introduces this lovely bloom : 
“ I gathered a magnolia-blossom, and placed it, yet moist 
with dew, upon the head of Atala, who still slept. I hoped 
that, according to my religion, the soul of some new-born 
infant would descend on the crystal dew of this flower, and 
that a prosperous dream would convey it to the bosom of my 
beloved.” 
