ROSACE®. 229 
Roses. An old recipe, in which our grandmothers delighted, and which, when con- 
cocted by their busy hands, served to perfume the state chambers for many a day, is as 
follows :— 
A few laurel and bay-leaves, knotted marjoram and dried balm of Gilead : besides 
these, to every two pecks of rose-leaves there should be orris-root sliced, gum benjamin 
and storax, 2 oz. of each ; |} oz. of musk, + lb. of angelica-root sliced, and three Seville 
oranges stuck as full of cloves as possible, dried in a cool oven, and either pounded or 
thrown in whole. 
Englishmen exalt the Rose as their national flower, for ever happily blended with 
the shamrock and thistle ; but we must not forget that at one period of our history 
it was the symbol for internal war and bloodshed, when the Red and the White Roses, 
and those that wore them, as nearly related to each other as the flowers themselves, 
waged a deadly fight with each other,—when, according to Skakespeare, Warwick says 
to Plantagenet :— 
“This brawl to-day, 
Grown to this faction in the Temple Garden, 
Shall send between the Red Rose and the White 
A thousand souls to death and deadly night.” 
A prophecy which was but too fatally fulfilled. 
The Union or York-and-Lancaster Rose, a very elegant variety, with mixed red 
and white petals, has been generally referred to the marriage of Henry VII. with 
Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV., by which the animosity of the contending houses 
was happily and finally extinguished. An old author penned the following lines, 
worthy of Anacreon, on presenting a white Rose to a Lancastrian lady :— 
“Tf this fair Rose offend thy sight, 
It in thy bosom wear ; 
Twill blush to find itself less white, 
And turn Lancastrian there.” 
The old saying, to speak “under the rose,” is somewhat difficult to explain ; but 
mythological writers afford a solution to it by telling us that “Cupid, the god of love, 
made Harpocrates, the god of silence, a present of the first Rose, to bribe him not to 
divulge the secrets of his mother Venus.” Hence the Rose became the symbol of 
silence, and was usually placed above the heads of the guests in banqueting-rooms, in 
order to banish restraint, and intimate that nothing would be divulged that was said 
sub rosa. 
According to old legends, the Rose was created without thorns, which grew on 
the plant in consequence of the wickedness of men. It was said to be the chosen flower 
of Mahomed, the Eastern prophet ; and travellers in Syria and Egypt give us wonderful 
accounts of the rose-gardens there, and the delight which the inhabitants take in the 
perfume of the flower. Among the Persians the Feast of Roses is a time of rejoicing, 
and lasts through the whole time of their flowering. 
Asa sacred emblem in the Roman Catholic Church, the Rose has long been regarded. 
It is supposed to be an emblem of the Virgin, and was recognized as such by St. Dominic 
when he introduced the devotion of the Rosary, with direct reference to the life of 
St. Mary. The prayers are said to have been symbolized as Roses. 
The Wild Rose is sometimes called the Canker in various parts of the country ; 
but, as it is a term of reproach, we do not desire to perpetuate it. Shakespeare alludes 
