42 A BOOK ABOUT ROSES. 



Royal Supremacy no voice has been ever raised. 

 It has been reverently acknowledged always ; but 

 its great champions and laureates have been found, 

 of course, among the poets — among those who 

 love beauty most, and in whose hearts a love of 

 the beautiful rings the " manifold soft chimes " of 

 song. In all lands and languages they have sung 

 the Rose, and in none with sweeter service than 

 our own. From Spenser to Tennyson there is no 

 great English chorister who has not loved and 

 lauded her. I have pages of extracts in my com- 

 monplace-book, but they are, I doubt not, familiar 

 to most of my readers, and the assertion which I 

 have made asks no further proof 



The excellent beauty of the Rose has not only 

 been appreciated in all times {semper), but in all 

 climes. 



2. Ubiqiie.*^ — Born in the East, it has been 

 diffused, like the sunlight, over all the world. A 

 flower, writes Pliny, known to all nations equally 



* I cannot write this word without recording an anecdote, which 

 has not, I beHeve, been published, but which well deserves to be. It 

 was told to me by an artillery officer, that a gentleman, dining at the 

 mess, Woolwich, mistook the Latin trisyllable Ubique on the regi- 

 mental plate for a French dissyllable, and dehghted the company by 

 exclaiming : ' ' Ubique ! Where's Ubique ? — never heard of that bat- 

 tle !" A very similar question was put to myself, showing to a young 

 friend, among some old curiosities, a medal which had been given to 

 my grandfather at school, and on which were engraved his initials, the 

 date, and the word "■ Merenti" — " Merend !" he exclaimed, " how one 

 forgets history!" (he might have said grammar also), "when was 

 thatf" 



