38 POETICAL LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. 
Stepping further into summer, comes the star-white 
Jasmine,—that sw x eet perfumer of the night, which 
only throws out its full fragrance when its sister stars 
are keeping watch in the sky ; as if when the song of 
the nightingale no longer cheered the darkness, it sent 
forth its silent aroma upon the listening air. Many a 
happy home does it garland, and peeps in at many a 
forbidden lattice, where Love and Beauty repose. 
Little did the proud courtiers and stately dames of 
Queen Elizabeth’s day dream that this sweet-scented 
creeper (a sprig of which seemed to make the haughty j 
haughtier still) would one day become so common as 
to cluster around, and embower thousands of humble 
English cottages,—a degradation which, could they but 
have witnessed, would almost have made every plait 
of their starched ruffs bristle up, like £- quills upon the 
fretful porcupine.” Beautiful are its long, drooping, 
dark-green shoots, trailing around the trellis-work of a 
door-way, like a green curtain embroidered with silver 
flowers; while here and there the queenly Moss-rose, 
creeping in and out like the threads of a fanciful tapes¬ 
try, shows its crimson face amid the embowered green, 
—a beautiful lady peeping through a leaf-clad case¬ 
ment. 
