The common anemone was known to the ancients but the finest kind was introduced into France from the East Indies, by Monsieur Bachelier, an eminent Florist.  He seems to have been a person of a truly selfish disposition, for he refused to share the possession of his floral treasure with any of his countrymen.  For ten years the new anemone from the East was to be seen no where in Europe but in Monsieur Bachelier’s parterre.  At last a counsellor of the French Parliament disgusted with the florist’s selfishness, artfully contrived when visiting the garden to drop his robe upon the flower in such a manner as to sweep off some of the seeds.  The servant, who was in his master’s secret, caught up the robe and carried it away.  The trick succeeded; and the counsellor shared the spoils with all his friends through whose agency the plant was multiplied in all parts of Europe.

THE OLIVE.

The OLIVE is generally regarded as an emblem of peace, and should have none but pleasant associations connected with it, but Ovid alludes to a wild species of this tree into which a rude and licentious fellow was converted as a punishment for “banishing the fair,” with indecent words and gestures.  The poet tells us of a secluded grotto surrounded by trembling reeds once frequented by the wood-nymphs of the sylvan race:—­

    Till Appulus with a dishonest air
    And gross behaviour, banished thence the fair. 
    The bold buffoon, whene’er they tread the green,
    Their motion mimics, but with jest obscene;
    Loose language oft he utters; but ere long
    A bark in filmy net-work binds his tongue;
    Thus changed, a base wild olive he remains;
    The shrub the coarseness of the clown retains.

Garth’s Ovid.

The mural of this is excellent.  The sentiment reminds me of the Earl of Roscommon’s well-known couplet in his Essay on Translated Verse, a poem now rarely read.

    Immodest words admit of no defense,[068]
    For want of decency is want of sense,

THE HYACINTH.

The HYACINTH has always been a great favorite with the poets, ancient and modern.  Homer mentions the Hyacinth as forming a portion of the materials of the couch of Jove and Juno.

    Thick new-born Violets a soft carpet spread,
    And clustering Lotos swelled the rising bed,
    And sudden Hyacinths[069] the turf bestrow,
    And flaming Crocus made the mountains glow

Iliad, Book 14

Milton gives a similar couch to Adam and Eve.

                Flowers were the couch
    Pansies, and Violets, and Asphodel
    And Hyacinth, earth’s freshest, softest lap

With the exception of the lotus (so common in Hindustan,) all these flowers, thus celebrated by the greatest of Grecian poets, and represented as fit luxuries for the gods, are at the command of the poorest peasant in England.  The common Hyacinth is known to the unlearned as the Harebell, so called from the bell shape of its flowers and from its growing so abundantly in thickets frequented by hares.  Shakespeare, as we have seen, calls it the Blue-bell.