22 
LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. 
Every one who has wandered by the meadow- 
streams and woodland brooks of pastoral England 
has gathered the blue Forget-me-not, one of the 
most beautiful of our water-loving flowers ; looking, 
where a bed of it is growing together, as if the blue 
of heaven had dropped down, and blended with 
the green tint of the earth. Nor is its azure-eyed 
sister of the meadow (the Mysotis cirvensis ) less 
fair: but its legend has yet to be written, and the 
gentle spirit portrayed who first planted it in the 
fields of Waterloo above the graves of England’s 
fallen heroes. 
The Myrtle had its birth in the sunny clime of 
the East, and first grew amid those gardens where 
the dark-eyed daughters of the sun, as they floated 
through the mazy circles of the dreamy dance, shook 
out their silken ringlets to the dallying wind. In 
many a peaceful valley which nestles down between 
the mountain-passes is it found, with its beautiful 
white blossoms blowing amid the untrodden soli¬ 
tudes, and filling the air with fragrance for miles 
around. The fair maidens of Judea bore it in their 
processions, and twined its scented branches into 
green arbours at their solemn festivals. And among 
the ancient traditions of the Arabs it is recorded, 
that Adam bore in his hand a sprig of Myrtle when 
he was driven from the garden of Paradise,—it 
