The stately COLUMBINE is an emblem of unfortunate love, from a very farfetched image. The nectaries of the flower, in its wild state, are thought to resemble, in shape and colour, the necks of doves (whence the name Columbine, from columba, a dove); and these birds, from the mournful note of their cooing, seem as if bewailing a lost companion. Botanists, however, call it aquilegia, from aquila, an eagle, imagining the nectaries resemble eagles' claws! We must leave the botanists and the symbolists to settle between themselves the somewhat conflicting characteristics of eagles and doves. Non nostrum est, &c.

MOONWORT (Osmunda lunaria) is one of the fern family, and has some strange superstitions attached to it. Over iron it was said to have such power, that any lock or bar could be opened by applying the herb to it, and it was therefore said to be used by thieves in their burglaries. It is reputed to draw the shoes off horses that tread upon it; hence it is called, by English peasants "unshoe the horse." Italians call it by a similar name in their language, "sferra cavalli." The old English herbalist, Culpepper, in speaking of it, states " I have heard commanders say that on White Down, in Devonshire, near Tiverton, there were found thirty horse shoes, pulled off from the Earl of Essex's horses, being there drawn up in a body, many of them newly shod, and no reason known, which caused great admiration; and the herb described usually grows on heaths." This fern is of rare occurrence; it bears a small slender stalk, four or five inches high, with one leaf cleft into divisions, six or seven on each side, and shaped like half-moons (whence the name), the upper clefts being larger than the lower. The flowerstalks rise two or three inches above this leaf, bearing branches of small globular capsules, green at first, and

afterwards a yellow brown; the seeds are like a mealy dust.

René, Duke of Anjou and Bar, and titular King of Jerusalem (father of our Queen, Margaret of Anjou), claimed the duchy of Lorraine in right of his wife, Isabel, eldest daughter of Duke Charles I. of Lorraine, who had left no son. But Anthony of Vaudemond, nephew of Duke Charles (being the son of his brother Ferri), claimed the duchy as limited to heirs male, and a war ensued, in which Anthony was aided by Philip Duke of Burgundy, surnamed the Good. Fortune was at first favourable to René; but at the battle of Bullegneville, near Neufchatel, in Lorraine (2nd July, 1431), he was taken prisoner, and delivered up by Anthony de Vaudemont to the Duke of Burgundy, who sent the illustrious captive to the Castle of Dijon, where he was confined in the top of a high tower, still existing. His principal amusement was painting; and he decorated the chapel of the castle with many miniatures painted on glass. In order to appeal to the affections of his people in Bar and Anjou, he painted numerous sprigs of moonwort, which he sent to his principal subjects as an intimation that he expected them to assume the qualities of that plant, and open the iron locks of his prison, either by force of arms, or by ransom. pictorial appeal failing of effect, the moonwort became among emblematists the symbol of forgetfulness. During the captivity of René, which lasted five years, he became heir to the kingdoms of Sicily and Naples, which he sent his wife to claim in his stead. He at length recovered his liberty, by submitting to some very hard conditions imposed on him by the Duke of Burgundy. After his release his daughter Margaret married Henry VI. of England.

His

In memory of the illustrious prisoner, René of Anjou, we shall accompany the moonwort with the translation of

The flower known of old as the SUNFLOWER, was emblematic both of love unrequited, and of constancy in the midst of disappointment. Clytie, daughter of Orchomarus, King of Persia, was enamoured of Apollo; but finding that he preferred her sister, Leucothea, she pined away with grief, till she was changed into a flower; which still, influenced by her love, turns its face towards the sun in whatever quarter of the heavens he appears. But what was the ancient sunflower? Not the gigantic yellow flower now so called, for that is a native of Peru, was unknown to the ancients, and does not turn invariably to the sun. Clytie's flower is believed to be the helianthemum, or small yellow rock rose. Ovid describes it as red, and the cistus helianthemum does assume a rose colour in some situations.

The large American tournsole, which

in Peru and Mexico grows twenty feet high, and bears flowers four feet in diameter, was called sunflower, from the resemblance between its vast disc, surrounded with gold-coloured ray-like petals, and the face of the sun. From this resemblance the Peruvian virgins of the sun wore on their temples representations of the flower, wrought in gold, to the surprise and admiration of the Spaniards. Since its introduction into Europe, it has superseded the classic sunflower in character among symbolists. Louis XIV. having adopted the sun for his cognizance, one of his obsequious courtiers took for his device a sunflower, with the motto"Il suit les mouvemens du soleil" (he follows the movements of the sun). Another French device was, a sunflower looking up to the luminary, with the motto " Sans toi j'expire" (without thee I die).

We shall accompany the helianthemum, as a flower of love, with the following

LINES.

M. E. M.

'Tis sweet to mark at evening hour The lamp gleam forth from distant tower, And know its light is kindled thus By one who fondly thinks of us. 'Tis sweet to know there is an ear Will list our coming step to hear; 'Tis sweet to know there is an eye Will brighten when it secs us nigh; To know there is a kindred heart Will sink in sorrow when we part; 'Tis sweet to soothe the mourner's pain With whisper'd vows we meet again." "Tis sweet to hear our vigil broke

By the shrill clock's expected stroke;
Whose warning summons, slow yet true,
Proclaims the hour of interview.
'Tis sweet that meeting hour to while
With broken phrase, and speaking smile,
And question kind, and mute reply,
Or glanc'd in look, or breath'd in sigh,
And fond reproach, that not the less
Springs from the soul of tenderness.
Then, while the time glides swift away,
And leaves a thousand things to say,
Sweet the impatient thrill we feel
O'er all our fluttering senses steal,
That prompts our hasty tale to tell,
Ere forc'd to sever with "farewell!"

But love may die, grow cold, or change,
Or yield to arts that faith estrange!
Then what a dull and dreary day
Succeeds when all has passed away!
O weary doth the spirit seem,

Of one who wakes as from a dream;
Who sees the lamp extinct above,
Or lighted for another love;
Who sees no more from kindling eye
The radiant glance of welcome fly;
Who feels the meeting hour now glide
In silence down time's darkened tide;
Whose heart is lone, whose hope is fled,
Whose ardent feelings all are dead.
To spirit thus, forlorn of mood,
The world is " peopled solitude."

There is another yellow flower, called by the ancients HELENIUM, which is a memorial of the tragic death of a beautiful but guilty woman, Helen, the cause of the Trojan war.

After

the destruction of Troy, she returned to Sparta, with her formerly forsaken husband, Menelaus; but on his death, being expelled by the Spartans, she retired to Rhodes, to her relative Polyxo. That princess had lost her husband in the Trojan war, and detesting Helen as the cause of her widowhood, she violated the laws of hospitality in the person of the fugitive-for, disguising herself and her Rhodian attendants in

"

the habit of the Furies, they seized on Helen while bathing, and hanged her on a plane-tree. From the tears that she shed while they were dragging her to the fatal tree, sprang the flower called after her name. Moderns call it "elecampane;" botanists term it inula; the Germans call it, "Helenen's kraut (Helen's herb); and the Italians, Elleno. In memory of the event, and in expiation of the guilt of Polyxo, the Rhodians erected a temple to Helen Dendritis, or Helen of the Tree, and caused to be engraved on the barks of the planes, "Revere me, I am the tree of Helen."

The transformations of which we read in classic mythology were not articles of faith with the ancients; for mythology is divisible into two parts, the religious and the poetical-the former, treating of the gods, their nature and worship, was a religious creed, at least to the multitude; but the poetic mythology, of which the metamorphoses and miraculous flowers are a prominent part, was not a matter of theological faith. It was the acknowledged creation of the poets. The qualities of a tree, the attitude of a flower, even the etymology of its name, were sufficient to inspire lively southern imaginations with a fable, or with embellishments and additions to a simple history, which, among a people delighting in the romantic, received a kind of pleased acceptance, a willing half-credence, such as in our own days is accorded to the creations of Shakspeare, of whom we speak as though they had all been real personages.

The poetic mythology is far more graceful than the religious mythology. Man in heathen times was constrained to believe in hordes of gods at variance with each other, degraded by puerili. ties, and disgraced by crimes, yet exercising over human beings capricious cruelties, against which there was no recognised protection. And if reason rejected these abominations, man was in danger of atheism-he had no authoritative guide to truth; at the best he could have but a dim, wavering, shadowy deism to be his staff in life and his lamp in the black portal of death. How beautifully has Milton. expressed, in his glorious hymn on the Nativity, the blessings of that Rising Sun that dispelled all the spectral illusions that filled the dark night of pagan idolatry!

M. E. M.

THERE cannot be a fitter time than the present for the examination of a subject, which, if not altogether new, seems yet to be on the point of receiving an altogether novel importance -that, namely, of Industrial Education.

We are fully aware that any article, in any periodical, headed with the word" Education' in any sense, is apt to be passed over by the majority of readers as something too dry and uninteresting to be worth perusal. We must, indeed, plead guilty ourselves to something of this feeling, and to a proneness to skip all educational articles wherever we meet with them. If, however, the reader, whose eye these few sentences may catch, will only resist the temptation of his own indolence (pardon our presumption), just for this once, and allow us to engage his attention for a few minutes, we think we can promise not only to give him some information, but even to interest and amuse him.

A school is to most people a dull place enough, and few can take any interest in looking at a parcel of children bending over their lessons, or even in tracing the progress they may be making in their studies, but a manufactory is an altogether different matter; the busy scene of useful activity, the complicated action of machinery, the rapid processes of production at work, and making things before our eyes, these have an interest, we might almost say an excitement, which touches a responsive chord in almost every human heart.

The school for pure intellectual

training and acquirement is, doubtless, after all the most important; it is the one which moulds the inner life, the spiritual existence of man, and addresses itself to the highest and noblest part of our nature; but a school for all the practical arts, and tending to the production of all the things that daily and hourly serve to minister to our wants, to supply our necessities, to gratify our senses, and our tastes, and to give ease and enjoyment to our lives in every minute of their existence, would nevertheless be the one most directly and most vividly appealing to our feelings, and enchaining and riveting our attention.

Education-what is the meaning of that word? The meaning commonly attached to it is "reading, writing, and arithmetic," with perhaps a little addition of Latin grammar. In its largest meaning it would include every external and internal circumstance, every voluntary or involuntary action, either of our own, or of others, that in any way affected us so as to educe, or bring out and lead on any of our powers, faculties, or qualities, whether mental, moral, or corporeal. In its technical and actual meaning it must be restricted so as to include only all those acts of instruction, training, teaching, and practising, which are intended to bring out, or lead on, any of these powers, faculties, or qualities.

Industrial education, therefore, would mean all teaching and training, calculated either to elicit or to enlarge the powers and capacities of the pupils for engaging in any of the industrial arts, from cobbling shoes to constructing