232 HAWTHORN. 



northern nations, of suspending a rose from the ceiling over 

 the upper end of their tables, when it was intended that the 

 conversation which took place should be sacred to secrecy. 

 It is this custom, undoubtedly, which first gave rise to the 

 common expression "under the rose."* 



FREDERICK. 



The white rose sprang from the tears of Venus; the red 

 from a wound she received from a thorn in her foot when 

 running about the woods in search of Adonis. But you have 

 not yet alluded to it, aunt, in the w r ars of the houses of York 

 and Lancaster. 



MRS. F. 



They were first assumed by John of Gaunt and his brother 

 Edward Duke of York, from whom the two rival houses 

 descended, and who therefore took them as their distinctive 

 badges, until the termination of the civil war by the marriage 

 of Elizabeth of York with Henry VII; when the two roses 

 united in one became the royal badge of England. The rose 

 or rosette to the shoe was worn under the house of Tudor, 

 but declined under the Stuarts, when the fashion of shoe- 

 strings arose. I think there is now only one English 

 emblem which we have not mentioned, and that is, the haw- 

 thorn. 



HENRIETTA. 



When was that used? 



MRS. F. 



We have mention made of it at the meeting of the Field 

 of the Cloth of Gold. It had been a popular emblem among 

 the English since the battle of Bosworth Field, from the 

 circumstance of the crown of Richard having been found on 

 that day lying under a hawthorn bush, whence it was taken to 



* Medical Botany. 



