14 
INTRODUCTION. 
passed away. We sigh, and try in vain to decipher 
these ancient emblems. 
Love turned to the fables of the Heathen Poets, and 
there he found that those whose beauty the gods could 
not lift into immortality, they changed into flowers ; as 
if they considered that next to the glory of being en¬ 
throned upon Olympus, was to be transformed into a 
beautiful and fragrant object; one that, so long as sun 
shone upon the world, and the globed dews hung their 
rounded silver upon the blossoms, so long should it 
stand throughout all time 
“ A thing of beauty, and a joy forever.” 
Thomas Miller. 
