appropriate. However, we are not concerned with Mr. Miller's language so
much as with a very fruitful suggestion he throws out, that "it is
surely worth while to trace a resemblance between the flower and the
emblem it represents" (a turn like that is nothing to Mr. Miller) "which
shall at least have some show of reason in it."

Come to think of it, there is something singularly unreasonable about
almost all floral symbolism. There is your forget-me-not, pink in the
bud, and sapphire in the flower, with a fruit that breaks up into four,
the very picture of inconstancy and discursiveness. Yet your lover, with
a singular blindness, presents this to his lady when they part. Then the
white water-lily is supposed to represent purity of heart, and, mark
you, it is white without and its centre is all set about with
innumerable golden stamens, while in the middle lies, to quote the words
of that distinguished botanist, Mr. Oliver, "a fleshy disc." Could
there be a better type of sordid and mercenary deliberation maintaining
a fair appearance? The tender apple-blossom, rather than Pretence, is
surely a reminder of Eden and the fall of love's devotion into inflated
worldliness. The poppy which flaunts its violent colours athwart the
bearded corn, and which frets and withers like the Second Mrs. Tanqueray
so soon as you bring it to the shelter of a decent home, is made the
symbol of Repose. One might almost think Aimé Martin and the other great
authorities on this subject wrote in a mood of irony.

The daisy, too, presents you Innocence, "companion of the milk-white
lamb," Mr. Miller calls it. I am sorry for the milk-white lamb. It was
one of the earliest discoveries of systematic botany that the daisy is a
fraud, a complicated impostor. _The daisy is not a flower at all._ It is
a favourite trap in botanical examinations, a snare for artless young
men entering the medical profession. Each of the little yellow things in