"The ancient and silent language of flowers lends its aid to gratitude, friendship, filial love, and maternal fondness. Even affliction may be soothed by the emblematical communication of sentiment. , when imprisoned by the tyrants of the , amused himself by the study of floral language, his daughter being allowed to send him flowers to the prison. Thence a few days before he met his fate on the scaffold, he sent back to this favorite child, two dried , to express both the purity of his heart, and the fate which awaited him."