VERVAIN. 
135 
VERVAIN. 
ENCHANTMENT. 
I wish that our botanists would attach a 
moral idea to all the plants which they describe. 
They would thus form a sort of universal dic¬ 
tionary, understood by all nations, and enduring 
as the world itself, since each spring would re¬ 
produce it without the slightest alteration of 
the characters. The altars of the great Jupiter 
are overthrown; the forests which witnessed 
the mysteries of the Druids no longer exist; 
the pyramids of Egypt will some day disappear, 
buried, like the Sphynx, beneath the sands of 
the desert: hut the lotus and the acanthus will 
still blossom on the hanks of the Nile; the 
mistletoe will still grow upon the oak ; and the 
Vervain upon the barren hills. 
Vervain was employed by the ancients in 
various kinds of divinations : they ascribed to it 
a thousand properties, and among others that 
of reconciling enemies. Whenever the Romans 
