The Italians, it is said, still have artificers called Festaroli, whose business it is to prepare festoons and garlands.  The ancient Romans were very tasteful in their nosegays and chaplets.  Pliny tells us that the Sicyonians were especially celebrated for the graceful art exhibited in the arrangement of the varied colors of their garlands, and he gives us the story of Glycera who, to please her lover Pausias, the painter of Sicyon, used to send him the most exquisite chaplets of her own braiding, which he regularly copied on his canvas.  He became very eminent as a flower-painter.  The last work of his pencil, and his master-piece, was a picture of his mistress in the act of arranging a chaplet.  The picture was called the Garland Twiner.  It is related that Antony for some time mistrusting Cleopatra made her taste in the first instance every thing presented to him at her banquets.  One day “the Serpent of old Nile” after dipping her own coronet of flowers into her goblet drank up the wine and then directed him to follow her example.  He was off his guard.  He dipped his chaplet in his cup.  The leaves had been touched with poison.  He was just raising the cup to his lips when she seized his arm, and said “Cease your jealous doubts, for know, that if I had desired your death or wished to live without you, I could easily have destroyed you.”  The Queen then ordered a prisoner to be brought into their presence, who being made to drink from the cup, instantly expired.[059]

Some of the nosegays made up by “flower-girls” in London and its neighbourhood are sold at such extravagant prices that none but the very wealthy are in the habit of purchasing them, though sometimes a poor lover is tempted to present his mistress on a ball-night with a bouquet that he can purchase only at the cost of a good many more leaves of bread or substantial meals than he can well spare.  He has to make every day a banian-day for perhaps half a month that his mistress may wear a nosegay for a few hours.  However, a lover is often like a cameleon and can almost live on air—­for a time—­“promise-crammed.”  ’You cannot feed capons so.’

At Covent Garden Market, (in London) and the first-rate Flower-shops, a single wreath or nosegay is often made up for the head or hand at a price that would support a poor labourer and his family for a month.  The colors of the wreaths are artfully arranged, so as to suit different complexions, and so also as to exhibit the most rare and costly flowers to the greatest possible advantage.

All true poets

—­The sages
Who have left streaks of light athwart their pages—­

have contemplated flowers—­with a passionate love, an ardent admiration; none more so than the sweet-souled Shakespeare.  They are regarded by the imaginative as the fairies of the vegetable world—­the physical personifications of etherial beauty.  In The Winter’s Tale our great dramatic bard has some delightful floral allusions that cannot be too often quoted.