AMIABILITY. 
39 
These charming flowers offer a rich cup to 
the gay and painted butterfly, which is never 
seen to greater advantage than when it is sip¬ 
ping the perfumed honey from the delicate 
petals of the white jasmine. 
This beautiful plant grew in Hampton 
Court garden at the end of the seventeenth 
century; hut, being lost there, was known 
only in Europe in the garden of the Grand 
Duke of Tuscany, at Pisa. From a jealous 
and selfish anxiety that he should continue 
to be the sole possessor of a plant so charm¬ 
ing and so rare, he strictly charged his gar¬ 
dener not to give a single sprig, or even a 
flower, to any person. The gardener might 
have been faithful if he had not loved; but, 
being attached to a fair, though portionless 
damsel, he presented her with a bouquet on 
her birth-day ; and, in order to render it 
more acceptable, ornamented it with a sprig 
of jasmine. The young maiden, to preserve 
the freshness of this pretty stranger, placed 
it in the earth, where it remained green until 
the return of spring, when it budded forth 
and was covered with flowers. She had pro¬ 
fited by her lover’s lessons, and now culti¬ 
vated her highly prized jasmine with care, for 
which she was amply repaid by its rapid 
growth. The poverty of the lovers had been 
a bar to their union; now, however, she 
amassed a little fortune by the sale of cut- 
