undiscovered. The number of plants in cultivation was still rather considerable, as appears from the old herbalists, especially Gerard, whose massive volume appeared in 1597. So far as it is possible to judge from the allusions in Elizabethan literature, it would seem as if in the Shaksperean age there was more real love for the few flowers then possessed, than is compatible with the embarras de richesse of the present day. The enormous quantity now possessed, the incessant arrival of novelties, alike forbid the quiet friendship which three centuries ago there was so little to distract, though there was plenty to sustain, and to invigorate in the sweetest manner.

The catalogue of Shakspere's wild-flowers, as we have seen, is very brief, yet the list of his garden flowers is only half as long, extending to only eight or nine. He had no occasion to mention any more; the great mass of the references fall, as it is, upon only two, the lily and the rose, these having been, from time immemorial, the poets' metaphors for loveliness and purity, especially feminine, and as shown in the feminine cheek, thus, in truth, part of the established vocabulary of civilised man. The shushan and chăbhatstsèleth of the Hebrews, the Xeípior and pódov of the Greeks, the lilium and rosa of the Romans, are their antetypes; only that while the application of the ancient names is indefinite, and the botanical species intended are often indeterminable, the nearer we draw to the Shaksperean times the more precise they become, Chaucer leading the way in our own country, till,