hateful Caracalla, when he visited Achilles' grave, laid garlands of flowers upon it. And when he himself died, to the great joy of his people, some were found who for a long time afterwards decked his tomb with spring and summer flowers, Non defuerunt, qui per longum tempus vernis æstivisque floribus tumulum ejus ornarint.' And Antonius dying, begged to have roses scattered on his tombManibus est imis rosa grata, et grata sepulchris,

Et Rosa flos florum.

So too Ovid, writing from the land of his exile, prayed his wife: "But do you perform the funeral rites for me when dead, and offer chaplets wet with your tears. Although the fire shall have changed my body into ashes, yet the sad dust will be sensible of your pious affection.' The sad dust' of the cultured Roman poet, by the way, will scarcely bear comparison with the conception of the Tahitian savage. Scipio Serapio was the only person who ever received after death from the Roman people the honour of a sparsio florum. He died in his tribuneship greatly beloved by the people. The property he left was found to be insufficient to pay the expenses of his burial, whereupon the people made a subscription to defray them; and when the body was borne to the grave, flowers were scattered upon it from every quarter (e prospectu omni '). Only the other day Francis Deak died, and it was almost impossible to read the accounts of the way in which his countrymen showed their love for him, without being carried back to the funeral of the Roman tribune.

The Romans certainly surpassed every nation in the number and variety of their chaplets. And though the civic and martial crowns conferred by the general voice of the army or citizens were for the most part composed solely of leaves or grass, and so bear indirectly only on our present inquiry, no triumph appears to have been complete without a plentiful use of flowers, the florum foliorumque sparsio. But though the Greeks were surpassed by the Romans in the number and variety of chaplets, they were not surpassed by them in the use of flowers for every purpose on occasions of military and civic rejoicing: the very name, qvλλoßoλoúμevov, given to those they wished to single out for the special favour of the people, owes its origin to the use. When Brasidas went to Scione, the inhabitants received him with every mark of honour. They publicly crowned him with a crown of gold as the liberator of Greece, while individually they decked him with garlands and thronged to him as to a victorious athlete.' The youthful Commodus as he drew near to Rome, on succeeding his father, was met by all the Roman nobles with laurels in their hands and all kinds of flowers that the season afforded. And they strewed all the way before him with flowers and garlands. The last semblance of a triumph in Rome was accorded 7 Thucydides.

• Herodianus.

to Narses in A.D. 554, when his soldiers with garlands in their hands chanted the praises of the conqueror.

It is hard to assign any year or period when the use of chaplets at meals, or rather at the symposium, was first introduced. At one time festal chaplets were unquestionably considered incompatible with sobriety of character, and, among the Romans, he who appeared with one in public was liable to severe punishment. The flower sellers and chaplet makers had an extensive trade, and at Athens a quarter of the market was devoted to them, τὸ στεφανηπλόκιον, called also αἱ μύῤῥιναι because the chaplets were for the most part composed of myrtle sprays interwoven with other flowers. At the μúppivai chaplets were sold readymade, or orders were received for them for the symposia. The most celebrated chaplet-maker of antiquity was Glycera, who frequently challenged Pausias the painter to surpass in painting her weaving of flowers. His ΣтεpavηTλóκos, a witness to the truth of their traditional contests, was still extant in Pliny's time. All kinds of flowers were used for the chaplets, but the rose, the king of flowers (BaotλEÙs Tâv åvОewv), ranked highest. Hence the Demos in Aristophanes Knights is to be ἐστεφανωμένος ρόδοις. Violet chaplets were in great favour with the Athenians, whence the name ioлTέpavot. Alcibiades went to Agatho's crowned with ivy and violets: . . . the voice of Alcibiades, who was very drunk, was heard in the court bawling very loud and asking, Where is Agatho? and ordering a slave to lead him to Agatho. The flute-player, therefore, and some others of his followers, supported him towards Agatho, and he stood at the doorcrowned with a garland of ivy and violets, and having very many. fillets on his head, and exclaiming: All hail, my friends! Either receive as a fellow tippler a man very drunk, or let us depart aftercrowning Agatho alone, for which purpose I have come.' It was usual to distribute the chaplets after supper and immediately before the Symposium; so, in Plutarch's banquet, supper being now ended, Melissa (Queen of Corinth) distributed the garlands, and we offered libations. It frequently devolved upon the host to provide them; the ancient custom alluded to by Ovid, and according to which each guest took his own garland ('vina dabat liber, tulerat sibi quisque coronam'), not being uniformly adhered to. Often (or, according to some, generally) the wreaths were handed round repeatedly during the same entertainment. In the neighbourhood of Pandosia it was considered disreputable to wear purchased flowers at festivals. The Greek fashion of wearing a garland (vπo@vμís) round the neck, as well as on the head, was not common with the Romans. Cicero, however, menAnd Ovid, too, in his description of the visit of the younger Tarquinius and his companions to the palace: 'ecce nurum regis fusis per colla coronis inveniunt.'" In the course of time the dietetic virtue • Fast. ii. 739. See also Tibullus, I. vii. 52:

'Et capite et collo mollia serta gerat.'

of the wreath, upheld by Tryphon the physician in Plutarch's Symposium, was lost sight of at Rome, and wreaths were appreciated solely as cheerful ornaments and symbols of festivity, and gave occasion to many a joke and game, such as the bibere coronas. The bridal wreath, OTEPós yaμńλiov, was composed of flowers plucked by the bride herself: to buy flowers for the purpose was of ill omen. The Roman corona nuptialis was generally formed of verbena, also gathered by the bride. And the bridegroom wore a chaplet, and the doors of his house and the bridal couch were made gay with garlands. At Cato's second marriage these customs were dispensed with, because fate was now summoning him to the war; still a solitary union pleased him, and nuptials devoid of empty pomp, and the admission of the gods alone as witnesses of the solemnities. No festive garlands hang from the wreath-bound threshold, and no white fillet runs along the two doorposts, &c.'

I have already referred to the Roman laws against the indiscriminate use of garlands. They were most rigorous, and the breach of them was attended with severe punishment. L. Fulvius, a banker, having been accused and found guilty, at the time of the Second Punic War, of looking down from the balcony of his house with a chaplet of roses on his head, was imprisoned by order of the Senate, and was not liberated before the war was brought to a close, a period of sixteen years. A great contrast to the license of the Greeks, instanced in the well-known story of Polemon. The case of P. Munatius is another example of Roman severity. Munatius, for having crowned himself with flowers taken from the statue of Marsyas, was condemned by the Triumviri to be put in chains. Upon his making appeal to the tribunes of the people, they refused to intercede in his behalf. It was by wreathing the statue of this same god, Marsyas, that Julia caused the bitterest grief to her father, the Emperor Augustus. Horace mentions a use to which flowers were put in his time that hitherto we have not come across: in the theatre the stage was covered with them

Recte necne crocum floresque perambulet Attæ.

This may have incited Cleopatra to receive Antonius at one of her banquets in an apartment strewn with rose leaves to a considerable depth, as the custom of festal chaplets prompted her to give him a horrible proof of her crafty spirit; and procured for us one of the most dramatic incidents of her life, and one that will stamp the character of the Egyptian queen, and mark the nature of her relations with the Roman triumvir, as long as the remembrance of her history endures. Shortly before the battle of Actium, Antonius had grown so distrustful of Cleopatra that he dreaded her very attentions, and would not even touch food until another had first tasted it. The queen wishing, it was said, to amuse herself with his fears, but more probably desirous of displaying her resource, her power, had the tips

of the flowers of a chaplet dipped in poison and then placed it upon her head. When the feast was at its highest she challenged Antonius to swallow the chaplet with his wine-it should be borne in mind that the more luxurious Romans were not satisfied with a banquet unless the petals of roses were swimming in their Falernian wine even in mid-winter. The leaves were stripped from off the wreath and thrown into the cup, and Antonius, oblivious of all apprehension of treachery, was on the very point of drinking, when Cleopatra arrested him with her hand and said, 'Behold, Marcus Antonius, the woman against whom you are so careful to take these new precautions in employing your tasters. And if I could exist without you, would either means or opportunity of effecting my purpose be wanting to me?' She then ordered a man to be brought from prison and made to drink off the potion. It was done, and he fell dead upon the spot.

It is unnecessary to follow the changes that heathen rites and customs in connection with our present subject underwent at the transforming touch of Christianity, and to note how the use of flowers was at a very early date adopted by the Christians in connection with their religious and social celebrations, as it is easy enough to trace the survival, or revival, or independent growth, in this nineteenth century and in our own country, of most of the primitive and ancient customs that have just passed before us. For instance, we need not now go to France on the 1st of November for the Parentalia, the Dies Violares of the old Romans; and our recent law reports furnish evidence that the use of flowers in religious worship is upheld with a resolution not displayed by even the Aztecs or Singhalese, the Egyptians or Greeks. But, though in our social life we have emulated the luxury of classic times in many things, we certainly have not yet gone so far as to need a Tertullian to write another De Coronâ.

A. LAMBERT.

ECHOES OF THE LATE DEBATE.

WELL, the great struggle is over. The Government has got its majority of 143. The victors and the vanquished have disappeared from St. Stephen's, and we may sit down quietly and review the result.

The preliminary objection which was taken by the party in power to the contention of the Liberals was primâ facie a formidable one. 'We,' said their orators, more especially Lord Sandon and Sir Stafford Northcote, the latter of whom quoted a truly unlucky despatch of the 29th of December, 1868, in which any opening up of questions involving interference with the internal administration of Turkey or the rights of the Sultan, over his own subjects, by the Conference then about to assemble, was deprecated by Mr. Gladstone's Foreign Secretary—we have been cruelly trammelled, throughout the whole of our dealings with the Eastern Question, by the fatal errors of our immediate predecessors. Mr. Gladstone, through his neglect of Turkish affairs, allowed all the evil agencies that were at work in the Balkan Peninsula to become so strong that, when the insurrection broke out in Bosnia and Herzegovina, we were like men playing against sharpers with loaded dice. Russia had the game for many months in her own hands.' To this Mr. Gladstone replied in effect: It is impossible to raise the Eastern Question when one wills; the Eastern Question is raised by circumstances-raised, so to speak, by itself.'

It may be doubted how far the historian of these times will accept this answer as sufficient; but that is chiefly a personal questionimportant to the annalist of Mr. Gladstone's brilliant career, but not of primary importance to the party which he led from 1868 to 1874. If it fell to the party to reply as a party, it would probably say: We admit that though the policy of 1856 required the most close attention to the affairs of Turkey, they were neglected when our leaders were in power, but did they stand alone in neglecting them? Did the government that preceded Mr. Gladstone's pay any attention to the warnings of Lord Strangford, when day by day, and week by week, he pointed out what was coming, warned the Foreign Office that it was most imperfectly informed about the Eastern Peninsula,