ROSE-LORE. 57 



These petals are coarse and irregular, and have 

 serrated edges, with a very faint scent. 1 



How the Rose twines itself around all history 

 and all literature ! There are the Rose gardens of 

 Persia, and the loves of the Rose and nightingale ; 

 there are those famous Roses once plucked in the 

 Temple Garden, of which " the pale and bloody 

 petals " (to use a fine expression of Hawthorne's) 

 were strewed over many an English battle-field ; 

 there is the golden Rose which the Pope gives as 

 the best of gifts to the foremost among Catholic 

 monarchs emblem at once of a fading earthly 

 life, and of the unfading life in heaven. 



Of English poets is there one, who does not 

 celebrate the Rose, and of all is there one, who 

 draws from it a more tender morality than Waller 

 in " Go, lovely Rose " ? 



But no nation ever loved the Rose as did the 

 Greeks, and it was their legend that told us how 

 the Rose sprang to birth. Bion's " Lament for 



1 Mr. Buist, of the Rosedale Nurseries, Philadelphia, has since 

 written to the Gardeners' Chronicle on the origin of the Green 

 Rose: "There appears to be some uncertainty in regard to the 

 origin of this Rose. It is a sport from Rosa Indica (the China Rose 

 of England and Daily Rose of America). It was caught in Charles- 

 ton, S.C., about 1833, and came to Baltimore through Mr. R. 

 Halliday, from whom I obtained it, and presented two plants to my 

 old friend, Thomas Rivers, in 1837." 



