'In the most high and palmy state of Rome,'
to introduce the beautifully metaphorical expression, 'palmy.' It will, of course, be immediately recognized as being from the 'palm' tree; that is to say, palm-abounding. And what visions of orient splendor does it bear with it, wafting on its wings the very aroma of the isles of the blest—μἁκαρων νἡσοι—or
'Where the gorgeous East, with richest hand,
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold!'
It bears us away with it, and we stand on that sun-kissed land
'Whose rivers wander over sands of gold,'
with a houri lurking in every 'bosky bourne,' and the beauteous palm, waving its umbrageous head, at once food, shade, and shelter.
The palm being to the Oriental of such passing price, we can easily imagine how he would so enhance its value as to make it the type of everything that is prosperous and glorious and 'palmy,' the beau-ideal of everything that is flourishing. Hear what Sir Walter Raleigh says on this subject: 'Nothing better proveth the excellency of this soil than the abundant growing of the palm trees without labor of man. This tree alone giveth unto man whatsoever his life beggeth at nature's hand.'
'Paradise,' too, is oriental in all its associations. It is παρἁδεισος,[8] that is, a park or pleasure ground, in which sense it is constantly employed by Xenophon, as every weary youth who has parasanged it with him knows. By the LXX it was used in a metaphorical sense for the garden of Eden:
'The glories we have known,
And that imperial palace whence we came;'
but a still loftier meaning did it acquire when the Christ employed it as descriptive of the splendors of the 'better land'—of the glories and beauties of the land Beulah.