228 ATTRACTIONS OF THE ROSE. 



which are blessed by the Pope on the first Sunday in Lent, while 

 they sing Laetera Jerusalema, and which after mass he carries in 

 procession, and then sends it to sovereigns, or presents it to princes 

 who visit his capital ; and it was the custom until about these last 

 forty years, for the prince who received this rose tree, to give a sum 

 equal to five hundred pounds to the person who brought him this 

 present from the pope; but the rose tree itself was worth twice that 

 sum. 



" Pope Julius the Second sent a consecrated rose of gold, dipped 

 in chrism, and perfumed with musk, to Archbishop Warham, to be 

 presented to Henry the Eighth, at high mass, with the apostolical 

 benediction. The king received the precious rose, and more precious 

 benediction, with profound reverence and excessive joy. But every 

 body knows how soon the remembrance of this rose faded with this 

 capricious monarch. 



" Mary Stuart, queen of Scots, sent a magnificent rose tree to 

 Rosnard, the French poet of the sixteenth century, which was valued 

 at two thousand crowns, with this inscription : Rosnard, VApollon 

 de la Source dcs Muses. 



** Bayle relates an accident which happened at the baptism of 

 Rosnard. In those days it was customary to bring large vases full 

 of rose water and baskets of flowers to christenings ; and as the nurse 

 was going to church with the infant bard, she let her flowers fall, and 

 in turning to recover them, she touched the attendant who carried 

 the vase of rose-water, and spilt it on the child; and this, says 

 Bayle, was since regarded as a happy presage of the good odour that 

 would some day scatter his poetry. 



" Painters represent St. Dorothy holding a nosegay of roses, be- 

 cause it is told in her life that an angel gave her a bunch of roses; 

 and a prodigy is related of St. Louis the Ninth of France. It is 

 pretended that a rose was seen to come out of his mouth after his 

 death. 



In the abbey of St. Croix, at Poictiers, they show a pillar that 

 w r as raised to commemorate a pretended miracle, and where they tell 

 you a rose tree in full blossom sprung out of the grave of a young 

 man after the day of his interment. It is truly shocking that the 

 teachers of Christianity should countenance such absurd super- 

 stitions. We could enumerate many others coupled with the rose ; 



