certain enchanted herbs; just as, later in the world’s history, Druids exorcised evil spirits with Mistletoe and Vervain, and sorcerers and wise women used St. John’s Wort and other plants to ward off demons and thunderbolts. The ancients evidently regarded their gods and goddesses as very human, and therefore it would seem unnecessary and unjust so to alter their tales about them as to explain away their obvious meaning. Flowers are the companions of man throughout his life--his attendants to his last resting place. They are, as Mr. Ruskin says, precious always “to the child and the girl, the peasant and the manufacturing operative, to the grisette and the nun, the lover and the monk.” Nature, in scattering them over the earth’s surface, would seem to have designed to cheer and refresh its inhabitants by their varied colouring and fragrance, and to elevate them by their wondrous beauty and delicacy; from them, as old Parkinson truly wrote, “we may draw matter at all times, not onely to magnifie the Creator that hath given them such diversities of forms, sents, and colours, that the most cunning workman cannot imitate, ... but many good instructions also to our selves; that as many herbs and flowers, with their fragrant sweet smels do comfort and as it were revive the spirits, and perfume a whole house, even so such men as live vertuously, labouring to do good, and profit the Church, God, and the common wealth by their pains or pen, do as it were send forth a pleasing savour of sweet instructions.” The poet Wordsworth reminds us that “God made the flowers to beautify The earth, and cheer man’s careful mood; And he is happiest who hath power To gather wisdom from a flower, And wake his heart in every hour To pleasant gratitude.”