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, 800 B.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 (the Borassus of 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 being spent 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 name gul-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."