170 BEA UTIES OF BRITISH TREES. [Jan., 



aiuoug all Howers whatsoever, being not onely esteemed for his 

 bcautie, vertues, and his fragrant and odoriferous smell, but also 

 because it is the honore and ornament of our English Scepter.' 



The archa3ology and symbolism of the Eose would fill a volume, I 

 can here only allude to the love that the ancient Romans had for this 

 flower, crowning themselves and their wine-jars in their banquets 

 with liose-garlauds, and, as ]\Ir. Alma-Tadema's pictures remind us, 

 strewing the petals on the water in their baths. Owing, it is said, to 

 a legend that Cupid bribed Harpocrates to silence by the present of a 

 Rose, it was a Roman custom to hang a Rose over the banqueting 

 table as a symbol that, though ' in vino Veritas,' things there 

 heard were not to be repeated : hence the expression, :iuh rosa. 

 The Rose of Sharon, in the Song of Solomon, has always been taken 

 as symbolical of the Catholic (Jhurch, whence probably arose the 

 custom of the Rope sending consecrated golden roses ^^to the various 

 Christian princes. England has too good cause to remember the 

 ■' faction in the Temple Garden,' tliat sent — 



' Between the Red Eose and the White, 

 A thousand souls to death and deadly night,' 



and it was probably mainly after the fusion of the rival houses of 

 York and Lancaster in the Tudor line that the Rose became 

 so favourite an architectural decoration. Long before this, 

 however, the Rose was the emblem flower of England, whose 

 pale-blossomed hedgerow briars covered with summer Roses 

 are even mentioned by Pliny. The presentation of a Rose, 

 sometimes, however, at the season of Christmas, when they 

 were not easily procurable, seems to have been a common feudal 

 form of honorary rent or ' petit serjeanty,' and Queen Elizabeth 

 compelled that unfortunate ' proud prelate,' Bishop Goxe, to let his 

 palace at Ely I'lace to her favourite Lord Chancellor, Sir Christo- 

 pher Hatton, at the annual rental of ten pounds, ten loads of hay, and 

 k\ Red Rose. The Bishops of Ely, however, reserved to therhselves 

 the right to gather twenty bushels of roses yearly in the gardens — a 

 x3rop which it would be difficult to raise in Hatton Garden at present. 

 The beautiful blossoms, sometimes pure white and sometimes 

 deep red, sweetly scented, surrounded by thorns and falling directly 

 their petals are fully expanded, have naturally been fruitful of 

 allegory : purit}^ and atoning blood, innocence surrounded by sin, the 

 sweets of life only to be obtained with its troubles, and the short- 

 lived character of all these delights, are the lessons which moralists, 

 divines, and poets, pagan as well as Christian, have drawn from the 

 Rose. Thus, in the Lady of the Lahc we have the sadder aspect, 

 when the poet says : — 



