The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, August, 1864, page 198 by Various Authors
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re truly types, how should they be interpreted?
There are hints laid in their very structure and outer semblance, hints afforded also by art and romance from time immemorial; and all these, suggestions of the hidden wisdom, must be gathered patiently and wrought out to a fuller clearness, through careful attention to the intuitions of one's own awakened imagination.
But what expression can be found for the soul of a flower--for the evanescent odor that floats upon us only with the dimmest mists of meaning?
In a novel of a few years since, a people dwelling in Mid Africa are described as skilled in the acts of a singular civilization, and especial mention is made of an instrument analogous to an organ, but which evoked perfumes instead of musical sounds. A curious idea, but possibly giving the nearest representation to be made of the effect of odor: by its help, then, by regarding flowers as instruments whose fragrant utterances might be as well conveyed in music, we may be able to translate aright the effluence that stirs beyond the reach of speech.
Let us now try to distinguish, if only for a pleasant pastime, some few favorite strains in those wonderful, unheard melodies with which our gardens ring.
Hear first the roses. The beautiful blush rose, opening fresh and rosy on a dewy June morning, echoes gleefully the birds' 'secret jargoning.'
The saffron tea-rose is an exotic of exotics, and the daintiest of fine ladies bears it in her jewelled fingers to the opera, and there imbues it with the languid ecstasy of an Italian melody. The aroma, floating round those creamy buds, vibrates to the impassioned agony of artistic luxury--to the pleasurable pain that dies away in rippling undulations of the tones.
But the red rose is dyed deep with simpler passion. War notes are hers, but not trumpet tongued, as they pour from out the fiery cactus. No; it is as if a woman's heart thrilled through the red rose to sadden the reveille for country and for