150 
LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. 
STOCK. 
LASTING BEAUTY. 
This flower, which is now become the pride 
of every British parterre, has been made the 
emblem of lasting beauty; for, though it is less 
graceful than the rose, and not so superb as 
the lily, its splendour is more durable and its 
fragrance of longer continuance. It was one 
n of the earliest inmates of our gardens that was 
cultivated by the dames of baronial castles, 
whence it was formerly called castle gilloflower 
and dames’ violet; for the name of violet was 
given to many flowers which had either a pur¬ 
ple tint or an agreeable smell. The name of 
gillyflower was also common to other plants, as 
the wall-gillyflower (wall-flower) and the clove- 
gillyflower, a species of pink or carnation. 
Few flowering plants have been so much and 
so rapidly improved by cultivation as the Stock.. 
Within the last two centuries, its nature has 
been so completely changed by the art of the 
florist, that what was, in queen Elizabeth’s 
time, but one degree removed from a small 
mountain or sea-side flower, is now become 
