ry later the prizes offered were an amaranthus of gold of
the value of 400 livres, for the best ode, a violet of silver, valued at
250 livres, for an essay in prose, a silver pansy, worth 200 livres, for
an eclogue, elegy or idyl, and a silver lily of the value of sixty
livres, for the best sonnet or hymn in honor of the Virgin Mary,--for
religion is mixed up with merriment, and heathen with Christian rites.
He who gained a prize three times was honored with the title of Doctor
_en gaye science_, the name given to the poetry of the Provencal
troubadours. A mass, a sermon, and alms-giving, commence the ceremonies.
The French poet, Ronsard who had gained a prize in the floral games, so
delighted Mary Queen of Scots with his verses on the Rose that she
presented him with a silver rose worth L500, with this inscription--"_A
Ronsard, l'Apollon de la source des Muses_."

At Ghent floral festivals are held twice a year when amateur and
professional florists assemble together and contribute each his share of
flowers to the grand general exhibition which is under the direct
patronage of the public authorities. Honorary medals are awarded to the
possessors of the finest flowers.

The chief floral festival of the Chinese is on their new year's day,
when their rivers are covered with boats laden with flowers, and gay
flags streaming from every mast. Their homes and temples are richly hung
with festoons of flowers. Boughs of the peach and plum trees in blossom,
enkianthus quinque-flora, camelias, cockscombs, magnolias, jonquils are
then exposed for sale in all the streets of Canton. Even the Chinese
ladies, who are visible at no other season, are seen on this occasion in
flower-boats on the river or in the public gardens on the shore.

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. Th