150 
LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. 
STOCK. 
lASTINe BEAUTT. 
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 continu¬ 
ance. It was one of the earliest inmates of our 
gardens that was cultivated by the dames of baronial 
castles, whence it was formerly called castle gilly¬ 
flower and dames’ violet; for the name of violet 
was given to many flowers which had either a purple 
tint or an agreeable smell. The name of gilly¬ 
flower 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 
