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| Atlas, fleeing into the woods from the pursuit of 


THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS, Ni 

In Dryden’s “Virgil” it is made an emblem of 
Violets are historical flowers, and poetical legends 
innumerable are woven about them. Milton makes 
Echo dwell 
“« By slow Meander’s margent green 
And in the Violet-embroider d vale.” 
Prosperpine was gathering Violets as well as Nar- 
cissi, when seized by Pluto; Ia, the daughter of 
Apollo, was changed into a Violet ; the nymphs, 
who waited on Endymion, in Keats’s beautiful 
legend, 
“Rain’d Violets upon his sleeping eyes ;” 
and in the floral ceremonies of the ancient Greeks, 
as well as Romans, this flower ever had a con- 
picuous place; while among the comparatively 
modern French troubadours, a golden Violet was 
the prize of the successful competitor in the lists of 
song. 
The Hawthorn is a tree around which many 
legends of flower language are woven. The young 
Athenian girls, we are told, brought branches of it 
to decorate the altar of wedlock, and those who. 
were about to plight their vows there. It was the 

} emblem of Hope, too ; and surely that is a hopeful 
———————— | 

