786 ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM. PART III. 



Taessa was particularly celebrated for roses, and that he saw a great quantity 

 of these flowers at Calicut. Sir John Chardin, in 1686, found the gardens oi 

 the Persians without " parterres, labyrinths, and other ornaments of Euro- 

 pean gardens, but filled with lilies, peach trees, and roses ; and all modern 

 travellers bear testimony to the esteem in which the flower is held in the 

 East. Sir William Ouseley tells us, in his Travels in Persia in 1819, that 

 when he entered the flower-garden belonging to the governor of the castle 

 near Fassa, he was overwhelmed with roses ; and Jackson, in his Journey, Sic, 

 says that the roses of the Sinan Nile, or Garden of the Nile, are unequalled; 

 and mattresses are made of their leaves for men of rank torechne on. Buck- 

 ingham speaks of the rose plantations of Damascus, as occupying an area oi 

 many acres about three miles from that city : but we have said so much oq 

 the gardens of Syria and Persia, and of the roses forming a conspicuous 

 article of culture In them, in the iiistorical part of our Encychpcedia of Gar- 

 dening, that we shall not dwell on the subject here, farther than to give the 

 following quotation from Sir Itobert Ker Porter's Travels: — 



" On 'my first entering this bower of fairy land," says this gentleman, 

 speaking oi'the garden of one of the royal palaces of Persia, " I was struck 

 with the appearance of two rose trees full Uft. high, laden with thousands of 

 flowers, in every decree of expansion, and of a bloom and delicacy of scent 

 that imbued the whole atmosphere with exquisite perfume. Indeed, I believe 

 that in no country in the world does the rose grow in such perfection as in 

 Persia ; in no country is it so cultivated and prized by the natives. Their 

 gardens and courts are crowded by its plants, their rooms ornamented with 

 vases filled with its gathered branches, and every bath strewed with the full- 

 blown flowers, plucked with the ever-replenished stems But, in this 



delicious garden of Negaaristan, the eye anil the smell are not the only senses 

 regaled by the presence of the rose" : the ear is enchanted by the vyild and 

 beautiful notesof multitudes of nightingales, whose warblings seem to increase 

 in meloily and softness with the unfolding of their favourite flowers. Here, 

 indeed, the stranger is more powerfully reminded that he is in the genuine 

 country of the nightingale and the rose." (Persia in Miniature, \o\. iii.) 



At marriases and other festivities, in the middle ages, the guests wore 

 chaplets of roses. The author of the romance of Perce Forest, describing 

 an entertainment, says, " Everv person wore a chaplet of roses on his head. 

 The constable of France, and, "probably, other great officers at other courts, 

 when he waited on the king at dinnerj had one of these crowns. Women, 

 when they took the veil, and when they married, were thus adorned. War- 

 riors wore their helmets encircled with these flowers, as appears from their 

 monumental fiijures. This fondness of oin- ancestors for this fragrant and 

 elegant flovver,1ind the various uses to which they applied it, explains a par- 

 ticular, that, at first sight, seems somewhat whimsical, which is, the bushels of 

 roses sometimes paid by vassals to their lords." {Histoire de la Vie Privee des 

 Francais,\o\.'\\.\).22\.) 



In Britain, one of the earliest notices of the rose occurs in Chaucer, who 

 wrote early in the thirteenth century ; and in the beginning of the fifteenth 

 century, as we have already noticed (p. .33.), there is evidence of the rose 

 having been cultivated for "commercial purposes ; and of the water distilled 

 from It beini; used to give a flavour to a variety of dishes, and to wash the 

 hands at meals; a custom still preserved in some of our colleges, and also ni 

 manv of the pubUc halls within the city of London. 



Among the new year's gifts presented to Queen Mary in 1556, was a bottle 

 of roose (rose) water, a lo'af of sugar, cinnamon, and rwximcg {Xiehors Illustra- 

 tions, note by T. G. C.) ; and, in 1570, we find among the items in the account 

 of a'dinner'of Lord Leycester, when he was chancellor of the University of 

 Oxford, 3 oz. of rose-wa"ter. /,„ r^ 



In an accoimt of a grant bv Richard Cox, Bishop of Ely, (18 Queen 

 Elizabeth, 20th March, 1576,) to Christopher (afterwards Sn- Christopher) 

 Hatton, of great part of Ely House, Holborn, for twenty-one years, the 



