nless I can feel that the little maids
who gather their first violets under the Acropolis rock, may receive for
them AEschylean words again with joy. I shall not be content, unless the
mothers watching their children at play in the Ceramicus of Paris, under
the scarred ruins of her Kings' palace, may yet teach them there to know
the flowers which the Maid of Orleans gathered at Domremy. I shall not be
satisfied unless every word I ask from the lips of the children of Florence
and Rome, may enable them better to praise the flowers that are chosen by
the hand of Matilda,[54] and bloom around the tomb of Virgil.

{191}

23. Now in this first example of nomenclature, the Master-name, being
_pure_ Greek, may easily be accepted by Greek children, remembering that
certain also of their own poets, if they did not call the flower a Grace
itself, at least thought of it as giving gladness to the Three in their
dances.[55] But for French children the word 'Grace' has been doubly and
trebly corrupted; first, by entirely false theological scholarship,
mistaking the 'Favor' or Grace done by God to good men, for the
'Misericordia,' or mercy, shown by Him to bad ones; and so, in practical
life, finally substituting 'Grace' as a word of extreme and mortal prayer,
for 'Merci,' and of late using 'Merci' in a totally ridiculous and
perverted power, for the giving of thanks (or refusal of offered good):
while the literally derived word 'Charite' has become, in the modern mind,
a gift, whether from God or man, only to the wretched, never to the happy:
and lastly, 'Grace' in its physical sense has been perverted, by their
social vulgarity, into an idea, whether with respect to form or motion,
commending itself rather to the ballet-master than either to the painter or
the priest.

For these reasons, the Master name of this family, for my French pupils,
must be simply 'Rhodiades,' which will bring, for them, the entire group of
names into easily remembered symmetry; and the English form of {192} the
same name, Rhodiad, is to be used by English scholars also for all tribes
of this group except the five principal ones.

24. Farther, in every gens of plants, one will be chosen as the
representative, which, if any, will be that examined and described in the
course of this work, if I have opportunity of doing so.

This representative flower will always be a wild one, and of the simplest
form which completely expresses the character of the plant;