JUNE 151 



less in variety, elegantly formed, of many beautiful tints, and 

 of endless shapes and sizes ; but alas ! to any one with a taste 

 for the beautiful, too frequently are they vulgarly named. 

 I love the old-world titles with which our forefathers named 

 the inhabitants of the Rosarium ; there were "Maiden's Blush," 

 " The Cinnamon Rose," or " the rose smelling like cinnamon," 

 as Gerard puts it ; there was the " Rose of a hundred leaves," 

 mentioned by Gerard in his " Herball " (1575), as "a certain 

 plant growing about Philippi with an hundred leaves, which 

 we hold to be the Holland Rose, that divers call the Province 

 Rose, but not properly." I should dearly love to quote whole 

 pages from these old books before me, and let you know what 

 Parkinson, Culpepper, and Gerard have to say about the queen 

 of flowers. It is sad that these old roses should be so de- 

 spised ; but such is the case, for often one comes across such a 

 sentence as this about old roses : " The old reign of cabbage 

 roses and China roses is over ; they are seldom to be found 

 except in old gardens, or cottage gardens." 



Love cherishes all sweet things in the heart long after 

 they have vanished from sight ; just as we may dream of 

 the summer roses when we walk through the grey mists of 

 winter. In my memory I have stored many a rose-idyll, 

 each one filled with a sweet sadness, and as fragrant as a 

 jar of pot-pourri, wherein are rose-leaves gathered in bygone 

 summers, perfumed with the lavender of friendship, a linger- 

 ing odour of rue the rue of regret and salted with many 

 tears ! In the western garden of twilight, see, the pink roses 

 of sunset are blooming, letting their petals fall upon the old 

 Manor garden, whose walks and lawns are overloaded with 

 beautiful roses. In the twilight shadows a lonely bachelor, 



