een more
frequently repeated than any other on earth. It was the flower of
mystery, the primeval emblem of Pantheism in beauty, the blossom of the
Morning Land. But the Rose belongs to the revellers and lovers in
Persia, to the worship and banquets of the joyous Greeks, to those who
meet in gardens by moonlight beside fountains, the children of Aphrodite
the Foam-born.

[Footnote A: The Lotus was to the Egyptian and Hindu not only an image
of physical life, but of life in all its strength and splendor, the type
of the generating and forming force of Nature in itself, expressing the
idea of 'water, health, life.' The Hindu imagined in its form the whole
earth, swimming like the lotus on water; the pistils represent Mount
Meru (the world's central point and the Indian Olympus), the stamens are
the peaks of the surrounding mountains, the four central leaves of its
crown are the four great divisions of the earth, according to the four
points of the compass, while the other leaves represented the circles of
the earth surrounding India. On the lotus is throned Brahma the creator,
and Lakshmi, the goddess of all blessings.

_Die Symbolik und Mythologie der Natur_, VON J. B. FRIEDERICH,
Wuerzburg, 1859.]

From the earliest age the World of Thought has been disputed by two
Spirits, and none are mightier than they. One, fearful in mysterious
beauty, the Queen of all that is occult and inscrutable, rises in cloudy
state from the antique Orient--from the Egypt of the Only Isis, and from
the Avatar land of Brahma--solemnly breathing the love of the All in
One. Infinitely lovely is the dark-browed Queen, and she bears in her
hand the lotus. Against her, in laughing sunlight, amid green leaves and
birdsong, waving merry warning, stands a brighter form--the incarnation
of purely earthly beauty--for she is all of earth and life; the Spirit
of the Actual and Material; and she is crowned with roses.

These are the Thought-Queens of Greece and India, of France and of
Germany. But the Christianity of the middle ages declared that the
flower was neither a Rose nor Lotus, and placed in the hand of its Queen
of Heaven the Lily of Martyrdom!

Dear reader, sit among green leaves until the birds no longer fear you;
or else peer from some quiet corner into your June garden, so that you
may watch its blossoms unobserved--as the little damsel in the Danish
tale did the dancing lilies. When the fever of life and self grows calm,
a feeling will