FLOWERS.

This programme of the Association of Free-thinkers in Rome is not an inapt commentary on the letter of the Bishop of Pennsylvania, and is a hearty response to the sympathy and encouragement given them in their work of destruction by the great and respectable New York meeting. It at least tells our American sympathizers how their friends in Rome understand their applause of the deposition of the Pope from his temporal sovereignty and the unity of Italy. Are they pleased with the response given them?

There may be a difference between the free-thinkers and their American friends; but the chief difference apparently is, that the free-thinkers are logical and have the courage of their principles, know what they mean and say it frankly, without reticence or circumlocution, while their American sympathizers have a hazy perception of their own principles, do not see very clearly whither they lead, and are afraid to push them to their last logical consequences. They have not fully mastered the principles on which they act; only half-know their own meaning; and the half they do know they would express and not express. Yet they are great men and learned men, but hampered by their Protestantism, which admits no clear or logical statement, except so far as it coincides with the free-thinkers in regarding the Papacy as a monster, which must, in the interests of civilization and liberty, be got rid of. Yet we can discover no substantial difference in principle between them. The deeds and events they applaud have no justification or excuse, save in the atrocious principles set forth by the free-thinkers. We are willing to believe these distinguished gentlemen try to persuade themselves, as they would fain persuade us, that it is possible to war against the Papacy without warring against revealed religion or Christian morals, as did the reformers in the sixteenth century; but these Roman free-thinkers know better, and tell them that they cannot do it. They understand perfectly well that Christianity as a revelation and an authoritative religion and the Papacy stand or fall together; and it is because they would get rid of all religions that claim to be revealed or to have authority in matters of conscience, that they seek to overthrow the Papacy. They attack the temporal sovereignty of the Pope only as a means of attacking more effectually his spiritual sovereignty; and they wish to get rid of his spiritual sovereignty only because they wish to rid themselves of the spiritual order, of the law of God, nay, of God himself, and feel themselves free to live for this world alone, and bend all their energies to the production, amassing, and enjoying the goods of time and sense. It is not the Pope personally, or his temporal government as such, that they call the worst enemy of mankind, or the "monster that for ages has made the earth a field of blood," but revealed religion, but faith, but the supernatural order, but the law of God, the spiritual order, which the Pope officially represents, and always and everywhere asserts, and which his temporal power aids him to assert more freely and independently. They recognize no medium between thePapacy and no-religion. They disdain all compromise, admit novia media, neither the Anglicanvia mediabetween "Romanism" and dissent, nor the Protestantvia mediabetween the Papacy and infidelity. They war not against Protestantism, though they despise it as a miserable compromise, neither one thing nor another; they even regard it with favor as a useful and an efficient ally in their anti-religious war.

The free-thinkers in Rome and elsewhere present the real and true issue between the Papacy and its enemies, and give the real meaning of the atrocious deeds which have effected the deposition of the Pope, the absorption of the state of the church, and the unity of Italy under the House of Savoy. They present it, too, without disguise, in its utter nakedness, so that the most stolid cannot mistake it; precisely as we ourselves have uniformly presented it. The issue is "the Papacy or no-religion," and the meaning of the deeds and events the New York meeting applauded is, "Down with the Papacy as the means of putting down religion and emancipating the human conscience from the law of God!" How does the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Pennsylvania, and his brother Protestant Episcopal bishops among the sympathizers with Italian unity, like the meaning or the issue, when presented truly and honestly, and they are forced to look it squarely in the face? What does Mr. Justice Strong, of the Supreme Court of the United States, think of it? He is the president of an evangelical—perhaps we should say fanatical—association, whose object is to procure an amendment to the preamble of the Constitution of the United States, so that the republic shall be made to profess, officially, belief in God, in Christ, and the supernatural inspiration of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. What says he to the assertion that "religions said to be revealed have always been the worst enemy of mankind"? Yet his name appears among the sympathizers with Italian unity. Do these gentlemen know what crimes and atrocities they applaud, and what is the cause with which they express their sympathy? Or, like the old Jews who crucified the Lord of Life between two thieves, are they ignorant of what they do?

These Roman free-thinkers only give us the programme of the secret societies, who have their network spread over all Europe, and even over this country; of the Mazzinis and Garibaldis, of the Red Republicans and Communists, who have instituted a new Reign of Terror in Paris, who are filling the prisons of that city while we are writing (April 7) with the friends of order, with priests and religious, plundering the churches, entering and robbing convents and nunneries, and insulting and maltreating their peaceful and holy inmates, banishing religion from the schools, suppressing the public worship of God, and drenching the streets in the blood of the purest and noblest of the land, all in the name of the people, of liberty, equality, and fraternity—the programme, in fact, of the whole revolutionary, radical, or so-called liberal party throughout the world. The realization of civil liberty, the advancement of science, the promotion of society, truth, and justice, are—unless, perhaps, with here and there an individual—a mere pretext to dupe simple and confiding people, and gain their support. The leaders and knowing ones are not duped; they understand what they want, and that is the total abolition of all revealed religion, of all belief in the spiritual order, orthe universal, eternal, and immutable principles of right and justice, and the complete emancipation of the human intellect from all faith in the supernatural, and of conscience from all the law not self-imposed.

Are our American sympathizers with Victor Emmanuel in his war on the Pope, with the unity of Italy, and the revolutionary party throughout Europe, and with which the Protestant missionaries on the Continent in Catholic nations are in intimate alliance, really dupes, and do they really fancy, if the Papacy were gone, the movement they applaud could be arrested before it had reached the programme of the Association of Free-thinkers in Rome? We can hardly believe it. Europe was reorganized, after the fall of the Roman Empire, by the Papacy, and consequently on a Christian basis—the independence of the spiritual order, and the freedom of religion from secular control or intermeddling, the rights of conscience, and the supremacy of truth and justice in the mutual relations of individuals and of nations. No doubt the Christian ideal was far from being practically realized in the conduct of men or nations; there were relics of heathen barbarism to be subdued, old superstitions to be rooted out, and fierce passions to be quelled. The Philistines still dwelt in the land. In reorganized Europe there was no lack of great crimes and great criminals, followed often by grand penances and grand expiations; society in practice was far from perfect, and the good work that the church was carrying on was often interrupted, retarded, or destroyed by barbarian and heathen invasions of the Normans from the North, the Huns from the East, and the Saracens from the South.

But the work was renewed as soon as the violence ceased. Under the inspiration and direction of the Papacy and the zealous and persevering labors of the bishops and their clergy, and the monastic orders of either sex, assisted not unfrequently by kings and emperors, secular princes and nobles, the Christian faith became the acknowledged faith of all ranks and classes, individuals and nations. Gradually the old heathen superstitions were rooted out, the barbarisms were softened if not wholly subdued, just and humane laws were enacted, the rights of individuals and of nations were defined and declared sacred and inviolable, schools were multiplied, colleges established, universities founded, intelligence diffused, and society was advancing, if slowly yet surely, towards the Christian ideal. If men or nations violated the immutable principles of justice and right, they at least recognized them and their duty to conform to them in their conduct; if the law was disobeyed, it was not denied or so altered as to sanction men's vices or crimes; if marriage was sometimes violated, its sacredness and indissolubility were held to be the law, and nobody sought to conform it to the interests of lust or lawless passion; if a feudal baron wrongfully invaded the territory of his brother baron, or oppressed his people, it was acknowledged to be wrong; in a word, if the conduct of men or nations was bad, it was in violation of the principles which they held to be right—of the law which they owned themselves bound to obey. The conscience was not perverted, nor ethics and legislation made to conform to a perverted conscience.

But in the sixteenth century, bold, base, and disorderly men rose not only in acts of disobedience to the Pope, which had been no rare thing, but in principle and doctrine againstthe Papacy; declared it a usurpation, hostile to the independence of sovereigns and the Bible; denounced the Papal Church as the mystery of Babylon, and the Pope as the man of sin. The sovereigns listened to them, and the people of several nations believed and trusted them, cast off the Papacy, and interrupted the progress in manners and morals, in society and civilization, which had been going on from the sixth century to the sixteenth under the auspices of the Popes. The reformers, as they are called, no doubt really believed that they could cast off the Papacy and retain the church, Christianity, revealed religion, in even greater purity and efficiency. Yet the experiment, it must be conceded, has not succeeded. The church, as an authoritative body, has been lost with the loss of the Papacy. The Bible, for the want of a competent and authoritative interpreter, has ceased to be authority for faith, and has been made to sanction the most various and contradictory opinions. Faith itself has been resolved into a variable opinion, and the law of God explained so as to suit each man's own taste and inclination. Religion is no longer the recognition and assertion of the supremacy of the spiritual order, the rights of God, and the homage due to our Maker, Redeemer, and Saviour; nothing eternal and immutable is acknowledged, and truth and justice, it is even contended, should vary from age to age, from people to people, and from individual to individual.

The state itself, which in several anti-Papal nations has undertaken to supply the place of the Papacy, has everywhere failed, and must fail, because, there being no spiritual authority above it to declare for it the law of God, or to place before it a fixed, irreversible, and infallible ideal, it has no support but in opinion, and necessarily becomes dependent on the people; and, however slowly or reluctantly, it is obliged to conform to their ever-varying opinions, passions, prejudices, ignorance, and false conscience. It may retard by acts of gross tyranny or by the exercise of despotic power the popular tendency for a time, but in proportion as it attempts it, it saps the foundations of its own authority, and prepares its own overthrow or subversion. If in the modern non-Catholic world there has been a marked progress in scientific inventions as applied to the mechanical and industrial arts, there has been an equally marked deterioration in men's principles and character. If there is in our times less distance between men's principles and practice than in mediæval times, it is not because their practice is more Christian, more just or elevated, for in fact it is far less so, but because they have lowered their ideal, and brought their principles down to the level of their practice. Having no authority for a fixed and determined creed, they assert as a principle none is necessary, nay, that any creed imposed by authority, and which one is not free to interpret according to one's own private judgments, tastes, or inclination, is hostile to the growth of intelligence, the advance of science, and the progress of civilization. The tendency in all Protestant sects, stronger in some, weaker in others, is to make light of dogmatic faith, and to resolve religion and morality into the sentiments and affections of our emotional nature. Whatever is authoritative or imposes a restraint on our sentiments, affections, passions, inclinations, fancies, whims, or caprices, is voted tyrannical and oppressive, an outrage on man's natural freedom, hostile to civilization, and not to be tolerated by a free people, who, knowing, dare maintain their rights.

Take as an apt illustration the question of marriage, the basis of the family, as the family is the basis of society. In the Papal Church marriage is a sacrament, holy and absolutely indissoluble save by death, and the severest struggles the Popes engaged in with kings and emperors were to compel them to maintain its sanctity. The so-called reformers rejected its sacramental character, and made it a civil contract, and dissoluble. At first, divorces were restricted to a single cause, that of adultery, and the guilty party was forbidden to marry again; but at the pressure of public opinion other causes were added, till now, in several states, divorce may be obtained for almost any cause, or no cause at all, and both parties be at liberty to marry again if they choose. There are, here and elsewhere, associations of women that contend that Christian marriage is a masculine institution for enslaving women, though it binds both man and woman in one and the same bond, and that seek to abolish the marriage bond altogether, make marriage provisional for so long a time as the mutual love of the parties may last, and dissoluble at the will or caprice of either party. No religious or legal sanction is needed in its formation or for its dissolution. Men and women should be under no restraint either before or after marriage, but should be free to couple and uncouple as inclination dictates, and leave the children, if any are suffered to be born, to the care of—we say not whom or what. Say we not, then, truly, that without the Papacy we lose the church; without the church, we lose revealed religion; and without revealed religion, we lose not only the supernatural order, but the moral order, even natural right and justice, and go inevitably to the conclusions reached by the free-thinkers in Rome. One of the greatest logicians of modern times, the late M. Proudhon, has said: "One who admits the existence even of God is logically bound to admit the whole Catholic Church, its Pope, its bishops and priests, its dogmas, and its entire cultus; and we must get rid of God before we can get rid of despotism and assert liberty."

Let our American sympathizers with Victor Emmanuel and the unity of Italy look at modern society as it is, and they can hardly fail to see that everything is unsettled, unmoored, and floating; that men's minds are everywhere shaken, agitated by doubt and uncertainty; that no principle, no institution, is too venerable or too sacred to be attacked, no truth is too well established to be questioned, and no government or authority too legitimate or too beneficent to be conspired against. Order there is none, liberty there is none; it is sought, but not yet obtained. Everywhere revolution, disorder—disorder in the state, disorder in society, disorder in the family, disorder in the individual, body and soul, thoughts and affections; and just in proportion as the Papacy is rejected or its influence ceases to be felt, the world intellectually and morally, individually and socially, lapses into chaos.

We describe tendencies, and readily admit that the whole non-Catholic world has not as yet followed out these tendencies to their last term; in most Protestant sects there are undoubtedly those who assert and honestly defend revealed religion, and to some extent Christian doctrines and morals; but, from their Catholic reminiscences and from the reflected influence of the Papacy still in the world by their side declaring the truth, the right, the just, for individuals and nations, and denouncing whatever is opposed to them, notfrom Protestant principles or by virtue of their Protestant tendencies; and just in proportion as the external influence of the Papacy has declined and men believed it becoming old and decrepit, has the Protestant world been more true to its innate tendencies, developed more logically its principles, cast off more entirely all dogmatic faith, resolved religion into a sentiment or emotion, and rushed into rationalism, free religion, and the total rejection of Christian faith or Christian morals, and justified its dereliction from God on principle and at the command of what it calls science—as if without God there could be any science, or anybody to cultivate it. The Protestant world has no principle of its own that opposes this result, or that when logically carried out does not lead surely and inevitably to it. The principles held by Protestants that oppose it and retain many of them from actually reaching it are borrowed from the Papacy, and if the Papacy should fall they would fall with it.

Now we ask, and we ask in all seriousness, the learned jurists, the distinguished statesmen, the able editors, the eminent Protestant divines, poets, and philosophers, who took part in or approved the great sympathy meeting, where but in the Papacy are we to look for the nucleus or the principle of European reorganization, for the spirit that will move over the weltering chaos and bid light spring from the darkness, and order from the confusion? We know they look anywhere but to the Papacy; to the Parisian Commune, to Kaiser William and Prince Bismarck, to Victor Emmanuel, to Mazzini, and to Garibaldi—that is, to the total abolition of the Papacy and the Catholic Church. But in this are they not like the physician who prescribes, as a cure to the man already drunk, drinking more and more deeply? Are they not like those infatuated Jews—we are writing on Good Friday—who demanded of Pilate the release, not of Jesus in whom no fault was found, but of Barabbas, who was a robber! Can Barabbas help them? Will he help re-establish the reign of law, and teach men to respect the rights of property, the rights of sovereigns, and the duties of subjects?

We say not that the Pope can reorganize Europe, for we know not the secret designs of Providence. Nations that have once been enlightened and tasted the good word of God, and have fallen away, lapsed into infidelity, and made a mock of Christ crucified, cannot easily, if at all, be renewed unto repentance and recover the faith they have knowingly and wilfully cast from them. There is not another Christ to be crucified for them. We have no assurance that these apostate European nations are ever to be reorganized; to be saved from the chaos into which they are now weltering; but if they are, we know this, that it can be only by the power and grace of God, communicated to them through the Papacy. There is no other source of help. Kings and Kaisers cannot do it, for it is all they can do to keep their own heads on their shoulders; the mob cannot do it, for it can only make "confusion worse confounded;" the popularly constituted state, like our own republic, cannot do it, for a popular state, a state that rests on the popular will, can only follow popular opinions, and reflect the ignorance, the passions, the fickleness, the selfishness, and the basenesses of the people; science and philosophy cannot do it, for they are themselves disorganized, in a chaotic state, uncertain whether man differs from the brute, whether he has a soul, or is only a congeries of matter, and whetherhe is or is not developed from the monkey or the tadpole; atheism cannot do it, for it has no positive principle, is the negation of all principle, and effective only for destruction; Protestantism cannot do it, for it is itself chaos, the original source of the evil, and contains as its own no principle or organite from which a new organization can be developed. We repeat, then, if there is any hope, it is in the Papacy, which rests on a basis outside of the world, and speaks with divine authority; and the first step to reorganization must be the re-establishment of the Holy Father in the full possession of his rights. Whether there is faith enough left on earth to demand and effect his restoration, remains to be seen.

Certain it is, let men say what they will, the Pope is the only sovereign power on earth at this moment that stands as the defender of the rights of independent governments, of international law, the equality of sovereign states without regard to size, race, language, or geographical position—the sole champion of those great, eternal, and immutable principles of justice on which depend alike public liberty and individual freedom, the sanctity and inviolability of the family, the peace and order and the very existence of society. If the kings and rulers of this world are with him, or dare utter a feeble whisper to encourage and sustain him, the people are opposed, or cold or indifferent, and pass him by, wagging their heads, saying in a mocking tone, "He trusted in heaven, and let heaven save him."

It were little short of profanity to indicate the contrast between his sublime attitude and the abject and servile attitude of these distinguished countrymen of ours. They but prove themselves slaves to the spirit of the age, and only reflect popular ignorance and passion, and follow the multitude to worship at the shrine of Success, and to trample on the wronged and outraged. He dares arraign the fierce and satanic spirit of the age, to face the enraged multitude, to defy popular opinion or popular passion, to proclaim the truth it condemns, to defend the right it tramples under foot, and uphold the scorned and rejected rights of God, and the inviolability of conscience. It were an insult to truth and justice, to moral greatness and nobility, to dwell on the contrast. His attitude is that of his Master when he trod the wine-press alone, and of the people none were with him. It is grand, it is sublime, beyond the power of mortal man, unless assisted with strength from above. No man, it seems to us, can contemplate his attitude, firm and inflexible, calm and serene, without being filled, if he have any nobility or generosity of soul, or any sense of moral heroism or true manliness in him, with admiration and awe, or feeling that his very attitude proves that he is in the right, and that God is with him. Let our American sympathizers with his traducers and persecutors behold him whom they calumniate, and, if they are men, blush and hang their heads. Shame and confusion should cover their faces!

To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,Where things that own not man's dominion dwell,And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been;To climb the trackless mountain all unseenWith the wild flock that never needs a fold,Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean—

Is a pleasure accorded to few only of the dwellers upon earth; seldom indeed to the few who could best appreciate the privilege. A large portion of the sum total of human existence is spent in cities. Outside of these, the wants of life, best supplied by the co-operation of numbers, gather people together in towns and villages. Travelling is generally such only as may be needful in the exercise of trades and professions, with a view to their ultimate end, the accumulation of wealth; or such as exhausted energies demand to fit them for further toil. The invalid, it is true, seeks to revive his failing powers in far-away balmy climates and delicious scenes—and there is a love for his birthplace in the heart of many a wanderer which leads him back time after time to the old homestead, and invests it with countless charms, although bleak and barren its surroundings may be—but to how few individuals it is given, in the fulness of their health and mental faculties, to rove abroad at will through the beauties and sublimities of creation—to look on her rolling oceans and broad lakes; her foaming cataracts and stupendous mountains; on the luxuriant loveliness of the torrid zone, and the icy wonders of the north!

Yet such things always make part of the expectancies, the bright anticipations of youth—the day-dreams, crushed down at last by hard realities. For to generation after generation the story of life is strangely the same. Its general events unfold themselves in a succession marked for each one with singular uniformity; a uniformity, indeed, so susceptible of calculation that on it are based many of its most extended speculations.

Pecuniary interests generally push their claims first and most boldly, because least to be evaded. Then come the petty edicts of an artificial social existence, which command and receive submission before their presence is even suspected, and though their power be neither recognized nor acknowledged. Gradually the turning kaleidoscope of time shows more sombre colors; the path to be trodden is made visible—the mind bends itself to the narrow way—earthly happiness seeks its realization in a circumscribed sphere—and so, one by one, the winged thoughts lower their circle of flight, and the dreamer ceases to dream.

But the love of nature is implanted too deeply in the heart of man to be ever entirely eradicated; and the sentiment finds for itself an expression coextensive with its existence in the universal love of flowers. They have a charm for the eye and soul welling from a deeper source than those graceful forms and brilliant colors, for they are a portion of the great universe. They are a link, and an important one, and the one most exquisitely fashioned, in the mighty chain which holds beside them not only the everlasting hills, but

"Planets, suns, and adamantine spheres."

Year after year they return to us with a beauty which never palls, to make us wiser, and better, and happier; and as punctually they meet from each true heart a greeting fitly due to their fairy manifestations of the same boundless Power which called forth those mightier, sublimer forms of matter so often placed beyond our reach.

Flowers, when mention is made of them in the Old Testament, are consecrated (so to say) by the most lofty associations; they typify virtue—happiness—the Deity himself. When the inspired writer would fain depict in language level to our humble capacity pleasures of which we can have not the most distant idea—the pleasures of man's first terrestrial paradise—he calls it a garden; as the word best embodying to us happiness sinless and complete; and the Deity in the same sacred volume prompted

"The flower of the field, and the lily of the valley," (Cant. ii.)

as the most appropriate figures of his own divine holiness. Flowers with lamps of fine gold made part of the decorations of Solomon's temple. The Scriptures were originally written in the land of bold imagery and under a burning sun, where herbage and water constitute wealth; consequently, we find throughout its pages rich pastures and flowing streams suggested themselves as emblems of rewards not only in this world, but of those beyond the grave. Again, the brief span of life, and the uncertainty of all earthly possessions, are imaged by the fading flower and the withered grass; and the prophets in their denunciations of the wicked constantly compare them, in the desolation of utter abandonment, to a garden without water.

Asia has always been the especial land of flowers; from the rose-gardens which Semiramis[49]planted at the foot of Mount Bajistanos, 800B.C., to the fragrant gardens now to be seen in almost every oriental city. The fame of these rose-gardens extended so far that Alexander the Great, on his Eastern expedition, turned a long way from his course to visit them. The city which Solomon founded, Tadmor in the wilderness (Palmyra), about midway between the Orontes and Euphrates, was celebrated, and indeed derived its name, from the abundance of a magnificent species of palm-tree which grew there. This tree (theBorassusof Lin.) yields a liquor seducing and pernicious, and in taste resembling weak champagne.[50]The ruins of this city and its surroundings are described by travellers as exceedingly imposing. The city of Susa (in Scripture, Susan), in a district lying on the Persian Gulf, was in ancient days the residence of the Persian kings; their summers beingspent at Ecbatana, in the cool mountainous district of Media. The name Susa signifies a lily, and is said to have been given on account of the great quantity and beauty of these flowers which grew in its vicinity. The fertility of the land of Bashan is mentioned in Scripture, and its oaks are coupled with the cedars of Lebanon. Media also is mentioned by old writers; and Carmania, north of the Persian Gulf, boasted of vines bearing clusters more than two feet long.

China in modern times calls herself the flowery kingdom, but she is not the only one; in many other parts roses are extensively cultivated for the purpose of distilling from them the ottar (attah-gul) of commerce; and the landscape is often converted for a hundred acres into one great rose-garden. It has been estimated that one-half of all the varieties of roses scattered over our gardens were originally brought from Asia; and perhaps, counting the fields planted there for distillation, it may be said that one-half of all in actual bloom adorn that quarter of the globe. Yet the simple wild roses of Asia, like our own wild roses, are very inconspicuous little flowers; it is only under the skilful hand of the florist that each one of those many varieties develops its own peculiar beauties, and we obtain the cultivated roses of the garden. The Afghan province of Turkistan is, in some parts, at the present day famous for its roses.Balkh, the modern capital, is so exceedingly hot that each spring the inhabitants in a body leave it for the little village of Mezar; and Mezar boasts of the most beautiful roses in the world—a fragrant red rose which they namegul-i-surkh. This peculiar variety grows on the pretended tomb of Ali (whose real monument is at Nedjef). They say that these roses will flourish in no soil but that of Mezar—an experiment (they say) which has been repeatedly tried and failed. Mr. Vambéry, who was there in 1864, says, "They are certainly more lovely and fragrant than any I ever saw."

Mr. Vambéry was sent in 1863, by the Hungarian Academy, on a scientific mission to Central Asia. At Teheran he assumed the dress of a dervish and the name of Hadji Rechid, and in this character he joined a company of twenty-four pilgrims, "ragged and dirty," who were on their return from Mecca to their far-away home in the northeast. They never penetrated his disguise—and with them he traversed an extent of country never before visited by a European. They travelled mostly by night, to avoid the excessive heat. Of course much natural landscape was lost, but we are struck with the abundance of flowers and gardens along this route. One which he mentions is not fascinating, but that was an exception; before leaving Teheran, he visited two European friends near there, and found "Count G—— in a small silk tent in a garden like a caldron; the heat was awful! Mr. Alison was more comfortable in his pleasant garden at Guhalek."

When the pilgrims resumed their journey at Teheran, such as were rich enough hired a camel for two, as partners. Mr. Vambéry soon loaned his animal to a "dirty friend," and joined the pedestrians, who, like true believers—followers of the Prophet—buried all care in one word,kismet.[51]As they tramped on (he says), "When their enthusiasm had beensufficiently stimulated by reminiscences of the gardens of Mergolan, Namengan, and Kholand, all began with one accord to sing a telkin (hymn), in which I joined by screaming as loud as I was able Allah ya Allah!"

The gardens at Tabersi, a place where they rested, were very beautiful, also there were "abundance of oranges and lemons, tinted yellow and red with their dark-green leaves." From scenes of luxuriant vegetation they passed into the desert of Turkistan, which extended on all sides, far as eye could reach, like a vast sea of sand, on one side slightly undulating in little hills, like waves in a storm, on the other side level as a calm lake. Not a bird in the air, nor a crawling thing on the earth; "traces of nothing but departed life in the bleaching bones of man or beast who had perished there!" But mark how rapid the transition once more to beauty and fertility! On emerging from this desolation and reaching the frontier of Bokara, they had only proceeded half an hour through a country resplendent with gardens and cultivated fields when the little village of Kakemir lay before them.

Bokara (the city) is at this day the Rome of Islam. There is a small garden not far from it whose fame is widely extended; for in it stands the tomb of Baha-ed-din, the national saint of Turkistan, second in sanctity only to Mahomet. Pilgrimages are made to this tomb and garden from the most remote parts of China; and the people of Bokara go every week. About three hundred asses ply for hire between the garden and the city. It is considered a miraculous devotion in these animals that, while they go thither with the greatest alacrity, only the most determined cudgelling can turn them homeward—but then, asses may have rural proclivities.

Samarcand is the most beautiful city in Turkistan; magnificent in her splendid gardens, and in the tale of past glory told in her ruins. Two of the lofty domes which greet the eye of the stranger as he approaches are associated with Timour—the one is his mosque, the other his tomb, where the warlike Tartar rests among flowers. If we can picture the many lofty edifices with their imposing domes, and then suppose the whole intermixed with closely planted gardens, we shall have a faint idea of the loveliness in the first view of Samarcand. The way from Samarcand to Karshi, south, lies for the last two miles entirely through gardens.[52]

In Karshi is a large garden called Kalenterkhane—literally, beggar's house; but we would rather translate it pilgrim's house. The words are somewhat synonymous there, where the most saintly pilgrims to the tomb of the Prophet subsist on alms. But this is a lovely garden on the bank of the river, with walks and beds of flowers; and here thebeau mondeof Karshi are to be seen daily from about two o'clock until past sunset. In different parts of the place the Samovins (gigantic Russian tea-kettles) are constantly occupied in furnishing their customers, gathered around them in circles two and three deep, with the national beverage, tea.

We have a slight glimpse of tropical flowers in a greenhouse, but nothing of their native beauty and abundance; for what a poor representative of its class is that dwarfed and solitary specimen, faded in color and deficient in the perfume of a hot climate! Then how can imaginationfill out the entire landscape—when vines and trees cluster together, and twist their dark leaves and a thousand such blossoms into one sweet mass? Then the nard grass; and the spicy chandan, which old books say once covered the mountains of Malaya; and the groves of catalpa—not the catalpa of our latitude, but that which opens under an Indian sky, which the bee seeks before all other blossoms! The morning-glory (Ipomea) here has no fragrance, but one which grows wild in Southern Asia gives out a perfume like cloves.

One thing we remark in Asia is the quantity of flowers cultivated in cities, even the largest and most densely populated; in those of China especially, flowers are a household necessity. In most other lands—certainly in ours—they are associated with life in the country, or, at least, they are the pleasant privilege of the little village. Flowers in a city are luxuries only within reach of the wealthy. A bouquet bought in the market-place is a rare excess of floral expenditure, and it must needs be trimmed and watered until the last leaf withers. The dweller in a labyrinth of brick walls is happy if he can, one time in a year, escape to grass and gardens, and refresh memory that such things exist; but in Asiatic cities flowers are a part of life. A modern traveller says:

"After an interesting passage up the river to Canton, the stranger enters the suburbs of the city. Here he is surprised to see the number of flowers and flowering-plants which everywhere meet his eyes ... every house-window and courtyard is filled with them."

The home of Ponqua-qua, a retired Chinese merchant and mandarin, was crowded with flowers and sweet shrubs. Besides a greenhouse of choice plants, and the customary garden, his banqueting-hall opened on a grove of orange-trees and camellias, all covered with singing-birds. In years long past, the same tastes prevailed. Sir John Chardon, who was in Persia in 1686, dwells on delicious city gardens of "roses, lilies, and peach-trees." And further back still, inA.D.1086, lived Atoz, a celebrated Chinese statesman and writer. In a description of his villa and grounds, he enumerates hedges of roses and pomegranate-trees—banks of odoriferous flowers—bamboo groves with gravel walks, willows and cedars, with the added treasure of a library of 5,000 volumes.[53]

In almost all pagan countries some certain flowers, either real or imaginary, receive a sort of veneration from being associated with supernatural and invisible things. Oftentimes the plant so honored is a tree, as theSomaof the Hindoos (the PersianHoma), which was "the first tree planted by Ahura-marda by the fountain of life. He who drinks of its juice can never die." In the HindooMahabharet, the mountain Mandar, the occasional abode of the deities, is covered with a "twining creeper;" and India boasts a vine well befitting to deck the home of the gods! It is the Bengalbanisteriaof Linnæus, the most gigantic of all climbers. Its blossoms are pale pink shaded with red and yellow—so beautiful and so fragrant that it has gained the native name "delight of the woods." Another mountain, Meroo—a spot "beyond man's comprehension"—isadorned with trees and celestial plants of rare virtue.

ThePelása(Butea frondosa) is held in great veneration; it gave name to the plain Plássey, or more properly Pelássey. It is named in theVedas, in the laws of Menu, and in Sanscrit poems. Few plants (says Sir W. Jones) are considered more venerable and holy. There was a famous grove of it once at Crishnanagar.

The orientalNaucleagives an odor like wine from its gold-colored blossoms, hence it was called Halipriga, or beloved of Halin, the Bacchus of India.

Theash-treeis very conspicuous in the fables of theEdda, and, as some part of the Scandinavian creed is said to have been carried thither from Asia, we may speak of it here. In the fifth fable of the proseEdda, the first man was named Aske (ash-tree), and the first woman Emla (elm-tree). We ask, Why these two especial trees? But see further—they were created by the sons of Bore from two pieces of wood found floating in the waves—and, behold, a sensible reason!

Anash-treeis in the palace of the gods; it typifies the universe. Its ramifications are countless—penetrating all things—and under its branches the gods hold council. But this ash-tree in various shapes is almost the only green leaf in Scandinavian mythology. Whatever else Sigge (Odin) carried thither from Asia, he left behind the countless (and some beautiful) flower legends. Or did they die in the icy north—and in their place spring up that machinery of blood and fierce passions which made Valhalla not the flower-clad mountain of oriental climes, but a battle-ground, where life was renewed only to be again pleasurably extinguished, and where boar's meat and mead was joy sufficient?

Flowers seem literally to pervade almost all oriental literature, ancient and modern. They inspire kings to lay aside care and enact the poet. In the middle of the last century, one of the Chinese emperors, Kienlong, distinguished himself by a long poem, in which he painted the beauties of nature and his admiration of them. He was contemporary with Frederick the Great, who also, as his French friend sneeringly informs us, always travelled with a quire of foolscap in his pocket. On which of the monarchs the muses smiled most kindly, no Chinese critic is here to tell. See-ma-kung, a Chinese statesman, wrote a book called theGarden—and very many similar might be named.[54]

What can express the softer emotions of the soul as well as flowers? The oriental lover can find no sweeter name for the object of his passion than "My rosebud!" Her form is the young palm-tree, her brow the white jasmine, her curling locks sweet hyacinths; her grace is the cypress; she is a fawn among aromatic shrubs!

"Roses and lilies are like the bright cheeks of beautiful maidens,In whose ears the pearls hang like drops of dew!"

Listen to a song from the Schar-Namah of Fedusi, one of the most celebrated Persian poets. In the original, the lines rhyme in couplets; this is only an extract. One can scarce think of the maiden as walking the earth. Surely she must have reclined on some rose, or floated round some lily!

"The air is perfumed with musk, and the waters of the brooks, are they not the essence of roses? This jasmine bending under the weight of its flowers, this thicket of roses shedding its perfume, seem like the divinities of the garden. Wherever Menisched, the daughter of Afrariab, appears, we find men happy. It is she who makes the garden as brilliant as the sun; the daughter of an august monarch, is she not a new star? She is the brilliant star that rises over the rose and jasmine. Peerless beauty! her features are veiled, but the elegance of her figure rivals the cypress. Her breath spreads the perfume of amber around her; upon her cheek reposes the rose. How languishing are her eyes! Her lips have stolen their color from the wine, but their odor is like the essence of roses."—Translated from Sismonde de Sismondi.

Nor is it only love which levies this tribute on flowers. We subjoin an extract from Mesihi, another poet whose fame is world-wide: Mesihi the irresistible!—who paints in many a lyric, with graphic touch, the fascinations of beauty, and in the concluding verse of one of them (with happy self-complacency) thus soliloquizes:

"Thou art a nightingale with a sweet voice,O Mesihi! when thou walkest with the damselsWhose cheeks are like roses!"

In the following subject, flowers would be expected, but in the long poem of which this is only a part they are truly—the whole:

ODE TO SPRING.

Thou hearest the song of the nightingale, that the vernal season approaches. The spring has spread a bower of joy in every grove; where the almond-tree sheds its silver blossoms.Be cheerful; be full of mirth;For the spring soon passes away, it will not last.The groves and hills are again adorned with all sorts of flowers. A pavilion of roses as a seat of pleasure is raised in the garden; who knows which of us will live when the fair season ends?Be cheerful; etc., etc.Again the dew glitters on the leaves of the lily like the water of a bright scymitar. The dew-drops fall through the air on the garden of roses; listen to me if thou wouldst be delighted.Be cheerful; etc., etc.The time is past when the plants were sick, and the rosebud hung its head on its bosom. The season comes in which mountains and steeps are covered with tulips.Be cheerful; etc., etc.Each morning the clouds shed gems over the rose gardens. The breath of the gale is Tartarian musk. Be not neglectful of duty through too great love of the world.Be cheerful; etc., etc.Mesihi, trans. by Sir W. Jones.

Thou hearest the song of the nightingale, that the vernal season approaches. The spring has spread a bower of joy in every grove; where the almond-tree sheds its silver blossoms.

Be cheerful; be full of mirth;For the spring soon passes away, it will not last.

The groves and hills are again adorned with all sorts of flowers. A pavilion of roses as a seat of pleasure is raised in the garden; who knows which of us will live when the fair season ends?

Be cheerful; etc., etc.

Again the dew glitters on the leaves of the lily like the water of a bright scymitar. The dew-drops fall through the air on the garden of roses; listen to me if thou wouldst be delighted.

Be cheerful; etc., etc.

The time is past when the plants were sick, and the rosebud hung its head on its bosom. The season comes in which mountains and steeps are covered with tulips.

Be cheerful; etc., etc.

Each morning the clouds shed gems over the rose gardens. The breath of the gale is Tartarian musk. Be not neglectful of duty through too great love of the world.

Be cheerful; etc., etc.

Mesihi, trans. by Sir W. Jones.

Flowers are beautiful—but such a profusion of them in print is not congenial to our northern tastes, despite other testimony in the enthusiasm of some oriental scholars. Of course, for those who are so happy as to read the originals there is a charm which is lost in translation—but there is good reason why we fail to sympathize. Hemmed in by cold and snow half the year, thought, passion, and deep feelings seek expression through channels not made of things visible; and their tides are not the less deep and strong because less demonstrative. The passionate and imaginative literature of the East is the outpourings of the soul under circumstances widely different from those under which similar effusions here (and some of the most impassioned and eloquent, too) have been penned. Each calls forth different tropes and figures—and if it is difficult for the one side to stir up imagination to untiring flights through rose-gardens, equally would the poet of Negaristan find it impossible to picture the charms of his mistress, and die of love or despair, before a coal-fire in the lamp-light.

Who can hear of roses without calling up an image of the nightingale, or, in Eastern phrase, the Bulbul? The mutual loves of the two (for roses can love there) have made the theme of tales and songs withoutnumber. Whether the story is fact or fiction—whether the bird really pours forth its most thrilling notes in the atmosphere of that perfume, may be a disputed point with "outside barbarians," but with native writers the belief is fully accepted. Here, again, the repetition is wearisome; and here, again, it is pleasant to blame—not our lack of imagination, but our peculiar surroundings; for, alas! our vault empyrean is colorless or cloudy; the melodious Bulbul a thing to dream of; and the song, generally, only a prosaic translation!

The southwestern part of Asia is the land of spices, frankincense, and myrrh. It is also the land of sweet flowers, although few modern travellers say much about them. One reason, perhaps, is that the extreme heat obliges the stranger to rest most of the day, and night is for stars, not flowers.

But who ever associates flowers with Arabia? Is it the prolonged and baleful influence of that little wood-cut map which monopolized a whole page in infantile geography—the map which presents Arabia arrayed in dots, which we were then and there informed meant desert? Or is it the omnipresent muffled figures, camels, and tents which typify Arabia in all books devoted to juveniles? Whatever the cause, Arabia and Arabians always come to mind sandy and wandering.

Not so the Arabia which Niebuhr traversed in the last part of the last century, with most ample opportunities for information.

Arabia, he writes, enjoys almost constant verdure. It is true, most of the trees shed their leaves, and annual plants wither and are reproduced; but the interval between the fall of old leaves and the reappearance of others is so short that it is scarcely observable.[55]

Here are found most of the plants of two zones. On the high lands, those of Europe and Northern or rather Middle Asia; on the plains, those of India and Africa, not precisely identical with those of Europe, but a different species or variety. Delicious and abundant also are all kinds of tropical fruits; and so plentiful the melons that they serve as food for their camels. From Arabia were also first brought many of those plants which we cultivate as curiosities rather than for beauty—thecactustribe. One of the most remarkable has its stem expanded to a globular form, about the size of a man's head; this rests on the earth, and from it proceed branches bearing flowers. In seeking for the most showy flowers, we must turn to their forest trees. Their forests are not very extensive, and such as they have are rarely seen by strangers, being quite distant from the usual course of travel. But the majestic height of the trees, covered with bright-colored and fragrant blossoms, are in marked contrast to our own forest trees, whose flowers, generally, can scarcely be distinguished from the leaves. One kind, thekeura, is so very fragrant that a small blossom will perfume an entire apartment. Among small sweet plants is thepanicratum, something like the sea-daffodil, of the purest white; anhibiscus, of the most brilliant red; and themoscharia, which gives from leaves and flowers the perfume of musk. But a catalogue of their names alone would exceed our limits.

"With these glorious blossoms," says Mr. Niebuhr, "the peasantry retain theancient custom of crowning themselves on certain days of joy and festivity."

There is poetry in this custom. "It is said that this nation alone has produced more poets than all others united" (Sismondi). Arabia shares more than flowers with the rest of Asia; she, too, joins to them poetry. Her people have the same fertile imagination, aversion to the restraints of cities, love of freedom and of nature, quick feelings and ardent passions, which make the true poet. The day is past—even so long past that they have forgotten it—when all this found expression in compositions, which we read now, and marvel at their rich inventions and glowing imagery; but, nevertheless, they are poets still! A distinguished French author writes:

"Through the whole extent of the Mohammedan dominions, in Turkey, Persia, and even to the extremity of India, a numerous class of Arabs, both men and women, find a livelihood in reciting these tales to crowds who delight to forget their annoyances in the pleasing dreams of imagination. In the coffee-houses of the Levant, one of these men will gather a silent crowd around him, whom he will excite, by his tale, to terror or pity; but more frequently he will picture to his audience those brilliant and fantastic visions which are the patrimony of Eastern imaginations. The public squares of cities abound with these story-tellers, who fill up, too, the dull hours of the seraglio. Physicians recommend them often to their patients, to soothe pain or induce sleep; and those accustomed to the sick modulate their voices and soften their tones as slumber steals over the sufferer."

Seven of the most remarkable old Arabian poems, written in gold, are hung in the Caaba, or Temple, at Mecca; and the authors show themselves not in the least degree behind other orientals in heaping up flowers and metaphors.

Flowers were once held, in Arabia, of high importance in science. Next to the sciences of mathematics, they valued that of medicine; and many volumes were written on their medical plants. Somewhere about the year 941, Aben-al-Beïther made a botanical tour over Europe and Asia, and a part of Africa, and, on his return, published a volumeOn the Virtues of Plants. Still earlier than this, in 775, Al-Mansour, the second prince of the Abassides, invited a Greek physician to his court, and obtained through him translations of many learned Greek works on medicinal plants. Such are flowers in Asia.

It is no wonder that, where nature has lavished her choicest productions, and all classes delight in cultivating them, flowers have increasedad infinitum. No wonder their brilliant hues inspired a native poet to sing:

"A rainbow has descended on the garden."

Mesihi.

The little colony who passed from Asia to Egypt and first peopled that portion of the Mediterranean shore, in that time so long past—time without a date—must have carried with them many of their native plants; for several found indigenous only in India are found cultivated there. Among others is the Nymphæ nelumbo, the Lotus. This bore in India a sacred character; the Hindoo fable taught that the little god of love, their Cupid, was first seen floating down the Ganges on a lotus leaf. In very many ways this flower is interwoven with the Hindoo creed, or introduced in their literature—as in the following. It is partof a sublimeHymn to Narayena, in which that great Invisible is thus addressed:

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