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HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



[July 1, 1867. 



Sadi, filled their writings with the odour of 



roses, — 



Hafiz loves, like Philomel, 

 With the darling- rose to dwell. 



Sadi was the author of " Gulistan," which means 

 "garden of roses ;" for " gul" is, in more than one 

 of the Oriental • languages, the name of the Rose. 

 The following is the motive which the author assigns 

 for having written this poem :— " On the first day of 

 the month of May I resolved with a friend to pass 

 the night in my garden. The ground was enamelled 

 with flowers, the sky was lighted with brilliant 

 stars ; the nightingale sang its sweetest melodies, 

 perched on the highest branches; the dew-drops 

 liung on the rose, like tears on the cheek of an 

 angry beauty; the parterre was covered with 

 hyacinths of a thousand hues, among which mean- 

 dered a limpid stream. When morning came, my 

 friend gathered rose,s, basilisks, and hyacinths, and 

 placed them in the folds of his garments ; but I said 

 to him, ' Throw these away, for I am going to com- 

 pose a Gulistan' (Garden of Roses) 'which will 

 last for eternity, whilst your flowers will live 

 but a day.' " 



Roses were known to the ancient Greeks and 

 Romans. Herodotus writes of roses in the garden 

 of Midas, the son of Gordius, in Phrygia, that had 

 sixty leaves, which grew of themselves, and had a 

 more agreeable fragrance than all the rest. The 

 Romans employed them at their feasts. Lucullus 

 expended fabulous sums, in order to be able to have 

 them at all seasons. In the time of the Republic 

 people used not to be satisfied unless their cups of 

 Ealernian wine were swimming with roses. 



" The Spartan soldiers, after the battle of Cirra, 

 were so fastidious as to refuse to drink any wine 

 that was not perfumed with roses. At the Regatta 

 of Baise, the whole surface of the Lucrine Sea used 

 to be strewn with this flower. In some of his ban- 

 quetings, Nero caused showers of the rose to 

 be rained down upon his guests from an aperture in 

 the ceiling. Heliogabalus carried this to such an 

 insane length as to cause the suffocation of several 

 of his guests, who could not extricate themselves 

 from the heaps of flowers. The Sybarites used to 

 sleep upon beds that were stuffed with rose-leaves. 

 The tyrant Dionysius had couches stuffed with roses, 

 on which he lounged at his revels. Verres would 

 travel iu a litter, reclining on a mattress stuffed with 

 roses. He wore, moreover, a garland of roses on 

 his head, and another round his neck. Over the 

 litter a thin net was drawn, with rose-leaves inter- 

 twined, whose fragrance he thus leisurely inhaled. 

 It was a favourite luxury of Antiochus to sleep, 

 even in winter, in a tent of gold and silk, and upon 

 a bed of roses. Cleopatra, in the entertainment she 

 gave in honour of Antony, spent an immense sum 

 in roses," with which she covered the floor of her 

 banquetiug-room to the depth of an ell. 



When Nero honoured the house of a Roman 

 noble with his presence at dinner, there was some- 

 thing more than flowers ; the host was put to an 

 enormous expense by having his fountains flinging 

 up rose water. While the jets were pouring out 

 the fragrant liquid, while rose-leaves were on the 

 ground, in the cushions on which the guests lay, 

 hanging in garlands on their brows, and in wreaths 

 around their necks, the couleur de rose pervaded 

 the dinner itself, and a rose pudding challenged the 

 appetites of the guests. To encourage digestion 

 there was rose wine, which Heliogabalus was not 

 only simple enough to drink, but extravagant enough 

 to bathe in. He went even further, by having the 

 public swimming-baths filled with wine of roses 

 and absinth. After breathing, wearing, eating, 

 drinking, lying on, walking over, and sleeping upon 

 roses, it is not wonderful that the unhappy ancient 

 grew sick. His medical man gave him immediately 

 a rose draught : whatever he ailed the rose was 

 made in some fashion to enter into the remedy for 

 his recovery. If the patient died, as he naturally 

 would, then of him, more than of any other, it 

 might be truly said he 



Died of a rose in aromatic pain. 



In almost all Oriental poetry and romance the 

 Bulbul, or nightingale, as it is erroneously called, is 

 associated with the rose. "You may place a 

 hundred handfuls of fragrant herbs and flowers 

 before the nightingale, yet he wishes not in his con- 

 stant heart for more than the sweet breath of his 

 beloved rose;" or, as Moore has expressed the 

 same sentiment — 



though rich the spot 



With every flower this earth has got, 



What is it to the nightingale 

 If there his darling rose is not ? 



Advantage is taken of the same belief by Lord 

 Byron in his " Bride of Abydos," wherein Znleika 

 plucks a rose and offers it to Selim, seated at his 

 feet, pleading through the simile of the nightingale's 

 love on behalf of her own — 



This rose to calm my brother's cares, 

 A message from the Bulbul bears ; 

 It says to-night he will prolong 

 For Selim's ear his sweetest song : 

 And though his note is somewhat sad, 

 He'll try for once a strain more glad, 

 With some faint hope his altered lay 

 May sing these gloomy thoughts away. 



And also in "The Giaour" the opening description 

 contains a no less happy allusion to ihe rose as the 

 "sultana of the nightingale," and to the nightingale 

 as " the Bulbul of a thousand tales,"— 



For there— the Rose o'er crag or vale, 

 Sultana of the Nightingale, 

 The maid for whom his melody. 

 His thousand songs are heard on high, 



