252 ON THE ROSE. 



The idea of taking a white or a red rose, as an ensign for the 

 parties who caused such dreadful devastation in this country for 

 many ages, seems to have originated in the Temple Gardens of 

 London, { if" we may trust to poetical history, that says in King 

 Henry the Sixth, 



'• Within the Temple hall we were too loud ; 

 The garden here is more convenient 



From the year 1454, until the families were united in 1485, civil 

 war laid waste the fairest portion of our country, and the sons 

 of one father often engaged in battle, and sometimes the father 

 against the son, under the different banners of the red and white 

 rose. 



In times of terror, fear and superstition are generally seen hand 

 in hand. During these ages of domestic wars, we are told they 

 discovered a rose tree at Longleat, which bore white flowers on one 

 side and red ones on the other side, prognosticating both the di. 

 vision and uniting of the two families. 



It was pretended upon the marriage of Henry the Seventh, 

 to Elizabeth, the daughter of Edward the Fourth, that the rose 

 first appeared with mijeed petals of red and white, which is still 

 acknowledged throughout Europe as the emblem of that happy 

 union, by the name of York, and Lancaster Rose." 



Gerrard tells us that the double white rose formerly grew wild 

 in the hedges of Lancashire, in great abundance as briers. This 

 we presume was the white dog rose which had become double 

 by some accidental circumstance, and that the variety propagated 

 itself by suckers and layers, in a soil that was suitable for that 

 purpose. 



" The sweetest rose where all are roses." 



The most delightful rose of which the garden boasts is the Pro- 

 vence, or provins rose, Rosa provincialis, and which has been 

 claimed by the inhabitants of the south of France as a native of 

 Provence; whilst the Dutch, says Gerrard, consider themselves 

 entitled to this flower, and say, as it first came out of Holland, it 

 ought to have been named the Holland Rose, and not Provence 

 rose ; but it appears very evidently from Pliny, that neither of 

 these coimtries can justly hold it as a native plant. He calls it 

 a Greek rose, and thus describes it in the fourth chapter of 

 his twenty-first book, The rose named Greecula, has its petals 



