ime the definitely intended poppy, in late Christian Greek art of
the twelfth century, modifies the form of the Acanthus leaf with its own,
until the northern twelfth century workman takes the thistle-head for the
poppy, and the thistle-leaf for acanthus. The true poppy-head remains in
the south, but gets more and more confused with grapes, till the
Renaissance carvers are content with any kind of boss full of seed, but
insist on such boss {104} or bursting globe as some essential part of their
ornament;--the bean-pod for the same reason (not without Pythagorean
notions, and some of republican election) is used by Brunelleschi for main
decoration of the lantern of Florence duomo; and, finally, the
ornamentation gets so shapeless, that M. Violet-le-Duc, in his 'Dictionary
of Ornament,' loses trace of its origin altogether, and fancies the later
forms were derived from the spadix of the arum.

16. I have no time to enter into farther details; but through all this vast
range of art, note this singular fact, that the wheat-ear, the vine, the
fleur-de-lys, the poppy, and the jagged leaf of the acanthus-weed, or
thistle, occupy the entire thoughts of the decorative workmen trained in
classic schools, to the exclusion of the rose, true lily, and the other
flowers of luxury. And that the deeply underlying reason of this is in the
relation of weeds to corn, or of the adverse powers of nature to the
beneficent ones, expressed for us readers of the Jewish scriptures,
centrally in the verse, "thorns also, and thistles, shall it bring forth to
thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field" ([Greek: chortos], grass or
corn), and exquisitely symbolized throughout the fields of Europe by the
presence of the purple 'corn-flag,' or gladiolus, and 'corn-rose'
(Gerarde's name for Papaver Rhoeas), in the midst of carelessly tended
corn; and in the traditions of the art of Europe by the springing of the
acanthus round the basket of the canephora, strictly the basket _for
bread_, the idea of bread {105} including all sacred things carried at the
feasts of Demeter, Bacchus, and the Queen of the Air. And this springing of
the thorny weeds round the basket of reed, distinctly taken up by the
Byzantine Italians in the basketwork capital of the twelfth century, (which
I have already illustrated at length in the 'Stones of Venice,') becomes
the germ of all capitals whatsoever, in the great schools of Gothic, to the
end of Gothic time, and also of al