ild boar, or the Typhon serpent of the waters,
destruction is more peculiarly implied, the fact that destruction is
simply a preparation for fresh life was never forgotten. The destroying,
undulating, wavy serpent of the waters was _also_ the type of life, and
wound around the staff of Escalapius as a healing emblem, recalling the
brazen serpent of Moses. In like manner the Tree of Life or of Knowledge
was the tree also of Death, or of Good and of Evil, _arbor cogniti boni
et mali_, and, according to the Rabbis, of sexual generation, from
eating of which the first parents became self-conscious. Beans, which
were symbols of impurity and peculiarly identified with evil
(MENKE, _De Leguminibus Veterum_, Gottingen, 1814), were also
typical of supporting life and of reviving spring and light. To see all
reflected in each, and each in all, is, in fact, the key to all the
mysteries of symbolism and the clue to the whole poetry of Nature.

I propose in the following chapters to discuss the poetry and mystery of
flowers, herbs, and other objects, and give not only their ancient
signification, but also their more modern meaning, as set forth in song
and in tradition.

THE ROSE.

'I felix Rosa, mollibusque sertis
Nostri cinge comas Apollinaris.
Quas tu nectere candidas, sed olim,
Sic te semper amet Venus, memento!'

MARTIAL, Epig. 88, lib. 7.

Among the most exquisite outbreathings of feeling in Nature we have the
Rose. Many flowers are in certain senses more beautiful, but as, among
women, she who charms is not always the most highly gifted with
conventional attractions, so it is with the Queen of the Garden, whose
proud simplicity is delicately blended with a familiar, friendly grace,
which wins by the tenderest spell of association.

Of all flowers, of all ages, in every land, the Rose has ever been most
intimately connected with humanity--a sentiment so earnestly expressed
and so lovingly repeated in the poetry, art, and myths of the olden
time, that it would seem as if tradition had once recorded what science
has only recently discovered, that this plant was coeval with Man.
Inferior, indeed, to the sacred Lotus as a religious symbol, the Rose
has always been superior to her sister of the silent waters as
expressing the most delicate mysteries of Beauty and of Love. The Lotus,
the only rival of the Rose in the early Nature-worship,[A] furnished
indeed in its name alone a solemn formula of faith which has b