Hence in numerous instances a meaning, wholly misguiding, has been assigned to various plants, and has given rise to much confusion.  This, too, it may be added, is the case in other countries as well as our own.

Furthermore, as M. de Gubernatis observes, “there exist a great number of books which pretend to explain the language of flowers, wherein one may occasionally find a popular or traditional symbol; but, as a rule, these expressions are generally the wild fancies of the author himself.”  Hence, in dealing with plant language, one is confronted with a host of handbooks, many of which are not only inaccurate, but misleading.  But in enumerating the recognised and well-known plants that have acquired a figurative meaning, it will be found that in a variety of cases this may be traced to their connection with some particular event in years past, and not to some chance or caprice, as some would make us believe.  The amaranth, for instance, which is the emblem of immortality, received its name, “never-fading,” from the Greeks on account of the lasting nature of its blossoms.  Accordingly, Milton crowns with amaranth the angelic multitude assembled before the Deity:—­

                 “To the ground,
  With solemn adoration, down they cast
  Their crowns, inwove with amaranth and gold. 
  Immortal amaranth, a flower which once
  In Paradise, fast by the tree of life,
  Began to bloom; but soon, for man’s offence,
  To heaven removed, where first it grew, there grows
  And flowers aloft, shading the font of life,” &c.

And in some parts of the Continent churches are adorned at Christmas-tide with the amaranth, as a symbol “of that immortality to which their faith bids them look.”

Grass, from its many beneficial qualities, has been made the emblem of usefulness; and the ivy, from its persistent habit of clinging to the heaviest support, has been universally adopted as the symbol of confiding love and fidelity.  Growing rapidly, it iron clasps:—­

  “The fissured stone with its entwining arms,
  And embowers with leaves for ever green,
  And berries dark.”

According to a Cornish tradition, the beautiful Iseult, unable to endure the loss of her betrothed—­the brave Tristran—­died of a broken heart, and was buried in the same church, but, by order of the king, the two graves were placed at a distance from each other.  Soon, however, there burst forth from the tomb of Tristran a branch of ivy, and another from the grave of Iseult; these shoots gradually growing upwards, until at last the lovers, represented by the clinging ivy, were again united beneath the vaulted roof of heaven.[2]

Then, again, the cypress, in floral language, denotes mourning; and, as an emblem of woe, may be traced to the familiar classical myth of Cyparissus, who, sorrow-stricken at having skin his favourite stag, was transformed into a cypress tree.  Its ominous and sad character is the subject of constant allusion, Virgil having introduced it into the funeral rites of his heroes.  Shelley speaks of the unwept youth whom no mourning maidens decked,