steal over you, as of wonder, that the flowers seem to be
breathing and beautying _for themselves_, and not for man. A pure, holy
life, quite apart from all ultimate destinies of bouquets and wreaths
and human uses, seems to prevail among them. Each has its expression,
its ineffably tender idea, not more clearly formulized, it is true, than
those which music conveys, yet quite as delicious. One might say that
they seem to talk together; but they do not think as we think or dream
as we dream--not even symbolically. It will be long ere you appreciate
more than their fresh joy of existence. But, little by little one herb
and flower after the other becomes individualized--they are artists
living themselves out into hues and lines and parts of a tableau; the
vine draws itself in an arabesque which is perfect _because_
self-forming; and the whole harmonize with the sway of sunlight and
shadow, with rustling breeze and hurrying ant on the footpath, and
chirping birds, so exquisitely that you may feel, as you never have in
studying human art or in poetry, that tones, colors, curves, organisms
_form_ altogether, or separately, the effect of each other. If among
them all there be a Rose, you will then find _why_ it was that she was
Flower Queen in Eden, and in all ages. No matter what rivals are
present, the Rose will first suggest _Woman_--Woman in her most
exquisite loveliness.

We find, indeed, in detail, that no flower furnishes so many obvious
points of comparison to a fair girl. Its delicate tints of white and red
are suggestive of her complexion, the bud is like prettily pouting lips,
while the exquisite perfume is, especially among the excitable children
of the East, the most daintily piquant of exotic stimulants. The
Nature-worship of the early ages, which saw in all things the action of
the male and female principles of generation, did not fail to discover
in the mossy rose (as it had done in the cup, the ring, the gate, the
mountain-path, and every other imaginable type of opening, passing
through, and receiving) a striking symbol of the Queen of Love, and of
her chief attribute. In accordance with the first rule of the first
religion, which was to identify the male and female godheads in the
Producer, they also discovered in the Rosebud a symbol of the male
principle, or of germinating life, from which unchanged word, as has
been thought, the name of Buddh' or Buddha was given--or taken.

As the flower dearest to Ven