
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 sipping 
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 ; 
but, 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 charming and so rare, he 
strictly charged his gardener 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 
profited 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 cuttings from the 
plant which love had given her, and bestowed 

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