SUMMER MEETING. 55 



ing of the flower-girls who had been apotheosized by some admiring 

 poet. Gallants among the young Eomaus were in the habit of present- 

 ing roses to the belles of the day, and mea rosa was a term of endear- 

 ment ased by the Roman lover to his betrothed. 



In the third century, when Heliogabalus, the beautiful long-haired 

 priest of the sun, was called from serving the altars of Baal in Phoeni- 

 cia to the wearing of the imperial purple, his extravagances left, behind 

 all those of his predecessors and drained the resources of the empire. 

 His gorgeous dresses, golden ornaments and precious jewels were 

 thrown aside after a single wearing. His floors were scattered with 

 gold dust and covered with roses. His porticoes and couches and 

 beds were strewn with them. Through the four years of his mad career 

 the pathway that led to his violent death was literally strewn with 

 roses. 



Symbolism is one of the earliest tendencies of national life. All 

 the objects and processes of nature have some hidden significance and 

 are associated with the faith, the joy, the sorrow of every-day life. The 

 rose has always associated itself with the sweeter humanities of life. 

 Though it blossoms through mythology, folklore, history and litera- 

 ture, it is as a wholesome, earth-born flower, not associated as the lotus 

 has been with superstitious rites and transcendental analogies; not 

 with crowned ambition, like the laurel and the bay; not as a symbol of 

 funereal woe, as the yew and the cypress. Here and there a story or 

 legend brings it in touch with sorrow, with superstitious fear, with evil ; 

 but even then it rather symbolizes the clinging hope that will accompany 

 the deepest human misery itself. Tulips and orchids have lent them- 

 selves to speculation, and been bought and sold in mad emulation with 

 as little sentiment as if they had been mere stocks and bonds. But 

 until the present day the rose has shaken herself free from all contami- 

 nations of such associations whenever they have chanced to come near 

 her. In spite of the prices that special fashionable roses have brought 

 of late, nothing seems to be able to vulgarize the rose, or spoil the 

 sweet graciousness that belongs to her. She still stoops to the hum- 

 blest home, and no life is so poor or barren that she is not ready to 

 s^yeeten and illuminate by her presence. She stands today as she did 

 among the Greeks and Romans: the queen of love and beauty; the 

 type of full, sweet human life, of jocund youth and happiness. 



After the Christian era and the Church had been fully established, 

 a great effort was made by the fathers to suppress the use of flowers, 

 both in religious ceremonials and for personal adornment, as having 

 been so closely associated with pagan rites. Tertullan wrote a book 

 against the use of garlands, and Clement of Alexandria argued that 



