⁂ Violets were the flowers of the empire, and when, in 1879, the ex-empress Eugénie was visited at Chislehurst by those who sympathized with her in the death of her son, “the prince imperial,” they were worn as symbols of attachment to the imperial family of France. The name was given to Napoleon on his banishment to Elba (1815), and implied that “he would return to France with the violets”.
Violet-Crowned City (The). Athens is so called by Aristophănês, (ιοστέφανος) (see Equites, 1323 and 1329; and Acharnians, 637). Macaulay refers to Athens as “the violet-crowned city.” Ion (a violet) was a representative king of Athens, whose four sons gave names to the four Athenian classes; and Greece, in Asia Minor, was called Ionia. Athens was the city of “Ion crowned its king,” and hence was the “Ion crowned” or King Ion’s city. Translating the word Ion into English, Athens was the “Violet-crowned” or King Violet’s city. Of course, the pun is the chief point, and was quite legitimate in comedy.
Similarly, Paris is called the “city of lillies,” by a pun between Louis and lys (the flower-de-luce), and France is l’empire des lys or l’empire des Louis.
By a similar pun, London might be called “the noisy town,” from hlúd, “noisy.”
Violetta, a Portuguese, married to Belfield, the elder brother, but deserted by him. The faithless husband gets betrothed to Sophia (daughter of Sir Benjamin Dove), who loves the younger brother. Both Violetta and the younger brother are shipwrecked and cast on the coast of Cornwall, in the vicinity of Squire Belfield’s estate; and Sophia is informed that her “betrothed” is a married man. She is therefore free from her betrothal, and marries the younger brother, the man of her choice; while the elder brother takes back his wife, to whom he becomes reconciled.--R. Cumberland, The Brothers (1769).
Violin (The Angel with the). Rubens’s “Harmony” is an angel of the male sex playing a bass-viol.
The angel with the violin,
Painted by Raphael, (?) he seemed.
Longfellow, The Wayside Inn (1863).
Violin-Makers (The best): Gasparo di Salo (1560-1610); Nicholas Amati (1596-1684); Antonio Stradivari (1670-1728); Joseph A. Guarneri (1683-1745).