1882. 



AND HORTICULTURIST. 



377 



and shrubs give a serene beauty to the land 

 scape, their quiescent appearance is wonderfully 

 picturesque about our tinal resting places. 



"The churchyard yew," so common to the 

 ancient burial grounds of England, is indeed an 

 object of veneration, as the poet Gray thus 

 graphically describes one : 



"Beneath those rugged elms, that yew tree's shade, 

 Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, 

 Each in his narrow cell forever laid. 

 The rude forefathei-s of the village sleep." 



While recently in Derbyshire, I visited the 

 celebrated yew, which still exists in the church- 

 yard of Darby Dale, and where the bones of the 

 villagers, in their many long years of repose, 

 have calmly slept in its solemn shade. This 

 time-honored tree, whose leaves seem as fresh 

 as ever, after a computed existence of more 

 than one thousand three hundred years, is still 

 in appearance a hale green tree. The venerable 

 evergreen measured a little over twenty- eight 

 feet in circumference, and is between fifty and 

 sixty feet high. Notwithstanding its extreme 

 great age, it exhibited no signs of decay in its 

 weird old trunk and branches. 



I remember another umbrageous and secluded 

 church-yard, through which I strolled one after- 

 noon in.Tune, where the odor of musk roses, 

 honeysuckles and jasmines, which gracefully 

 festooned the tops of some old hawthorns, were 

 blending their fragrance with the new mown 

 hay in the adjacent meadows. While resting on 

 the old rustic stile, I noticed near b}' both vio- 

 lets and primroses, though out of flower, nestling 

 among the fronds of the curiously-fashioned 

 Scolopendrium crispum and the graceful little 

 Asplenium viride, with Veronica officinalis, all 

 so meek and pretty. While scattered along the 

 copestones of the surrounding wall, where the 

 mortar was loose and crumbling, green patches 

 of Sempervivum tectorum, Sedum acre, Linaria 

 cymballaria, Asplenium trichomanes, and A. 

 Kuta — muraria, with moss and lichens in abun- 

 dance. Nor was there wanting among them the 

 old wall flowers Cheiranthus fruticulosus and C. 

 Cheiri, once the glory of our grandmother's 

 gardens, and so sweetly scented as any which 

 grew therein. While sacred to the memory of 

 other days, and so grateful to the olfactory sen- 

 sations of the good and simple folk who lived 

 and died among them, grew sturdy bushes of 

 those universal favorites, the sweet old Provence 

 and rich Damask roses, ol exquisite perfume, 

 so dear to all true lovers of flowers. Of these 



olden beauties, Rosa damascena was welcomed 

 by our ancestors in 1573. while R. moschata and 

 R. proviencialis came into favor in 1596, during 

 the reign of "Good Queen Bess." And notwith- 

 standing the many excellent additions to the 

 Rosary since then, they have held their own 

 among their numerous gay competitors for 

 admiration ever since. And still another old 

 and curious fashioned kind was there, no less 

 than the famous striped red and white York and 

 Lancaster rose, whose history dates from the 

 time of the marriage of Henry VII., of Lancas- 

 ter, wiih Elizabeth of York, which settled their 

 bloody feud sometime between 14S5 and 150&, 

 Everything around bore evidence of remote 

 antiquity, and even the rose bushes seemed aged 

 like the rest. 



Incidentally, in connection with these admira- 

 ble old roses, I would like, in ideality, to carry 

 the reader back to the beginning of the fifteenth 

 century, when Henry IV. was king. The scene 

 is in a country church-yard, October 2oth, 1402, 

 wherein the rose is made to play an important 

 part. 



Quoting from " Cullora's Antiquities," the 

 following remarks will convey to the reader's 

 mind the recognized importance of roses in the 

 afiairs of the goodly folk of the olden time. 



"Sir William Compton granted to Thomas 

 Smyth a piece of ground called Dockmadive, in 

 Haustede, for the annual payment of a rose, at 

 the nativity of Saint John the Baptist, to Sir 

 William and his heirs, in lieu of services; dated 

 at Haustede, on Sunday next before the Feast 

 of All Saints, 8 Henry IV., 1-402." 



It seems to have been a common occurrence 

 in ancient times to date important deeds on 

 Sunday, in the church or church-yard, where it 

 was usual, according to long custom, to execute 

 them. The reason assigned for it was to give 

 greater publicity to the transaction, in the pres- 

 ence of God-fearing people, who were then as- 

 sembled to worship Him. 



The Romans, in their fondness for roses, left 

 legacies in their wills, so that their tombs might 

 be annually decorated with this sweetest of 

 flowers, a practice said to be introduced by them 

 into England. Both Camden and Aubury speak 

 of the church-yard in their time as " thickly 

 planted with rose trees." 



While in " the sacred precincts of the dead," 

 with pensive feelings pondering over the past, 

 and vaguely speculating upon the future, mem- 

 ory aptly recalled the almost forgotten lines with 



