t these lines in the opening Iliad:

"[Greek: Stemmat' echon en chersin hekebolou Apollonos,]
[Greek: Chruseoi ana skeptroi;]"

And recollect that a sceptre is properly a staff to lean upon; and that as
a crown or diadem is first a binding thing, a 'sceptre' is first a
_supporting_ thing, and it is in its nobleness, itself made of the stem of
a young tree. You may just as well learn also this:

"[Greek: Nai ma tode skeptron, to men oupote phulla kai ozous]
[Greek: Phusei, epeide prota tomen en oressi leloipen,]
[Greek: Oud' anathelesei; peri gar rha he chalkos elepse]
[Greek: Phulla te kai phloion; nun aute min huies Achaion]
[Greek: En palameis phoreousi dikaspoloi, hoi te themistas]
[Greek: Pros Dios eiruatai;]"

"Now, by this sacred sceptre hear me swear
Which never more shall leaves or blossoms bear,
Which, severed from the trunk, (as I from thee,)
On the bare mountains left its parent tree;
This sceptre, formed by tempered steel to prove
An ensign of the delegates of Jove,
From whom the power of laws and justice springs
(Tremendous oath, inviolate to Kings)."

13. The supporting power in the tree itself is, I doubt not, greatly
increased by this spiral action; and the fine {138} instinct of its being
so, caused the twisted pillar to be used in the Lombardic Gothic,--at
first, merely as a pleasant variety of form, but at last constructively and
universally, by Giotto, and all the architects of his school. Not that the
spiral form actually adds to the strength of a Lombardic pillar, by
imitating contortions of wood, any more than the fluting of a Doric shaft
adds to its strength by imitating the canaliculation of a reed; but the
perfect action of the imagination, which had adopted the encircling
acanthus for the capital, adopted the twining stemma for the shaft; the
pure delight of the eye being the first condition in either case: and it is
inconceivable how much of the pleasure taken both in ornament and in
natural form is founded elementarily on groups of spiral line. The study in
our fifth plate, of the involucre of the waste-thistle,[38] is as good an
example as I can give of the more subtle and concealed conditions of this
structure.

14. Returning to our present business of nomenclature, we find the Greek
word, 'stemma,' adopted by the Latins, {139} becoming the expression of a
growing and hereditary race; and the branched tree, the natural type, among
all nations, of m