Page:The Romance of Nature; or, The Flower-Seasons Illustrated.djvu/258

160 poetic illustration. The rich crimson one is named Buonapartia, the two others, purple and white, are the Racemosa Cærulea, and Colvillii. The lines accompanying this group might, perhaps, induce some of my readers to regret my seeming ignorance of the whimsical but much-patronized fancy, that the Passion-flower is a natural tablet,—a medal struck by nature in memory of the Crucifixion. This idea I have often seen, both in prose and poetry; and it is not from ignorance of it, but doubt of its propriety, that my illustration has other allusions. I shall, perhaps, be told, that it is but a fable, and should have been allowed a place at least in a work where so many fables and fanciful legends are assembled; but the subject is too serious to rank with the mere fanciful creations of our classic mythologists and quaint poets. For myself, I consider the fancy the most groundless that has yet been linked with the fair tribes of Flora. Even had the Passion-flowers been natives of Palestine, the notion would have more apparent reason, but they are denizens of the wild forests of a world undiscovered till centuries after the event they are said to commemorate. There are many flowers, too, with cruciform parts, quite as aptly emblematical as this splendid tribe, which bears no analogy to the subject but in its triple-headed stigma. The petals are ten in number, the anthers five, and the long pencilled threads of the star-like nectary are various in number, and almost countless in many varieties. I shall therefore leave the emblem study of the beautiful Passiflora to minds more superstitiously imaginative than my