ROSEMARY 



9083 



ROSEWOOD 



1885 to 1893 was register of the United States 

 Treasury. His rank of brigadier-general was 

 restored to him by Congress in 1889. 



ROSEMARY, rohz'mari, an evergreen shrub 

 of the mint family, loved for the aromatic fra- 

 grance of its leaves. It is a native of the Medi- 

 terranean region. Rosemary grows from four 

 to eight feet high and bears dark green leaves 

 with a white under surface, and tiny pale-blue 

 flowers. When seen in masses it looks like blue- 

 gray mist blown over the meadows from the 

 sea. The name, in fact, is derived from the 

 Latin rosmarinus, meaning sea dew. Rosemary 

 yields an oil which is used chiefly in perfumes 

 and in aromatic waters. The plant is an em- 

 blem of fidelity and remembrance. In Hamlet 

 occurs the often-quoted remark of Ophelia, 

 "There's rosemary, that's for remembrance." 



The American marsh rosemary, common in 

 salt bogs of the Atlantic states, is a mem- 

 ber of the leadwort family. 



ROSES, WARS OF THE, the name given in 

 English history to the struggle which took 

 place in the latter part of the fifteenth century 

 between the House of York and the House of 

 Lancaster for the possession of the English 

 throne. The House of Lancaster took as its 

 emblem a red rose, the House of York a white 

 rose, and from these insignia came the name 

 given to the conflict. The wars began in 1455 

 with the Battle of Saint Albans and closed with 

 the Battle of Bosworth, in 1485. At the out- 

 break the king was Henry VI, a grandson of the 

 Lancastrian Henry IV, who had seized the 

 throne in 1399 ; his chief opponent was Richard, 

 Duke of York. During the struggle Henry was 

 deposed and Edward IV of the House of York 

 was crowned king; Henry was reinstated and 

 a second time forced to give up the royal au- 

 thority to Edward. The Yorkists held the 

 royal power without active opposition until the 

 accession of the unpopular Richard III, whom 

 a rising under the Duke of Richmond, head of 

 Lancastrian House, drove from the throne. 

 Richmond was crowned king as Henry VII, 

 by marrying Elizabeth, daughter of Ed- 

 ward IV, he united the two rival houses. See 

 LANCASTER, HOUSE or; YORK, HOUSE or. 



Consult Oalrdner's The Houses of Lancaster 

 and York. 



ROSETTA, rozet'a, STONE, the stone 

 which gave to the world the key for the trans- 

 lation of the long-lost ancient Egyptian lan- 

 guage (see HIEROGLYPHICS). It is insci 

 with a decree of the Egyptian priesthood, which 

 had assembled at Memphis in 195 B.C. The 



THE ROSETTA STONE 

 As seen in the British Mu- 

 seum, London. 



decree, issued in honor of Ptolemy V Epiph- 

 anes (205-181 B.C.), was written in hiero- 

 glyphics, or picture writing, in demotic, a sim- 

 plified form of Egyptian writing, and in Greek. 

 Scholars were able to decipher the Egyptian 

 texts by compar- 

 ing them with the 

 Greek, a n d i n 

 this way they 

 found the clue to 

 the hidden char- 

 acters of the lan- 

 guage of the an- 

 cients. The Ro- 

 setta Stone, now 

 in the British 

 Museum, is com- 

 posed of black ba- 

 salt. It was found 

 near Rosetta, 

 Egypt, in 1799 by 

 a French officer of 

 Napoleon's engineering corps. Parts have been 

 broken away, and at present it is three feet, 

 nine inches in height, eleven inches in thick- 

 ness, and two feet, four and one-half inches in 

 breadth. 



Consult Budge's A History of Egypt ; Sharpe's 

 Rosetta Stone in Hieroglyphics and Gr< 



ROSE WINDOW, a large, circular window 

 divided by slender bars into compartm. 

 used in Gothic churches. Usually a rose win- 

 dow is formed of beautifully-colored glass, but 

 it is frequently of plain glass; the name is not 

 due to color, but 

 to its shape. 

 When the tracery 

 radiates from a 

 center, or is more 

 distinctly c o m - 

 mitted to a spoke- 

 like arrangement, 

 the window i s 

 often called a 

 Catherine wheel, 

 marigold or 

 window. The 

 rose window was ROSE WINDOW 



a feature in the church architecture of the thir- 

 teenth and fourteenth centuries in France and 

 England. Many examples are found in th< 

 cathedrals of Paris, Rheims and Amiens. 



ROSE 'WOOD, the name of several varieties 

 of a beautiful wood used in making ornamental 

 furniture and musical instruments. Rosewood 

 is prized for the high polish it attains, and for 



