104 KOSACE^. 



Its flowers are large, pure white, and very sweet. Its foliage 

 is scentless, of a full bright green, and the large leaflets taper 

 very gracefully. This is reputed to be the White Rose which 

 became the standard of the Yorkists. I fancy it is also the 

 species sometimes called Musk Eose, its scent partaking of 

 that odour. It was a great favourite with Keats, who writes of 

 its charms again and again 



" I saw the sweetest flower that Nature yields, 

 A fresh-blown Musk Rose ; 'twas the first that threw 

 Its sweets upon the summer: graceful it grew 

 As is the wand that Queen Titania wields : 

 And as I feasted on its fragrancy, 

 I thought the garden Rose it far excelled." 



In Scripture the Eose is spoken of as a type of prosperity : 

 " The desert shall rejoice and blossom as the Eose." Dr. 

 Murray states that the Eose used to be considered to possess 

 medicinal properties, and enormous quantities of the Damascus 

 Eose were cultivated in the East for chemical purposes : he 

 speaks of a breakfast given at Hazar Bagh, or " thousand 

 gardens," near Shiraz, to Sir John Malcolm, then our envoy 

 to the Court of Persia, which was celebrated on a stack of 

 Eoses. " The stack, which was as large as a common one of 

 hay in England, had been formed without much trouble from 

 the heaps of Eose-leaves collected before they were sent into 

 the city to be distilled." He relates, also, that a courier who 

 brought despatches overland from Constantinople to the British 

 Government was robbed and plundered of everything by 

 thieves. Among the goods he was conveying were several 

 bottles of attar of Eoses, and, one of these breaking, the scent 

 was so powerful as to guide the officers of justice to the robbers' 

 den. Herrick draws a simple moral from the fast-perishing 

 Wild Eose 



" Gather the Roses while ye may, 



Old Time is still a-flying ; 

 And this same flower which smiles to day 

 To-morrow will be dying." 



and the same idea of the fleeting nature of all joys, of which 



