THE EOSE. 227 



times in the year an offering of roses was made to 

 the members of the court, as if to remind them that 

 the upright and unbending severity of Justice might 

 be graced and adorned without being rendered 

 less efficacious and exact, if tempered with the 

 sweetness of mercy, and the beauty of generous 

 feeling. Every duke and peer, whose title included 

 him in that court (whether he were a " Son of 

 France/' a King of Navarre, or some lesser lumi- 

 nary), was obliged, in his turn, to preside at the 

 solemnities of this offering. The proceedings com- 

 menced by strewing the floors of all the different 

 chambers with odoriferous herbs and flowers, but, 



selves. In the thirteenth century, however, the name of 

 Parliament became appropriated to the body of nobles who 

 composed the court of the king, and who, therefore, discussed 

 public affairs. Gradually we find this distinctive character 

 becoming less marked, and when, according to M. Davezac- 

 Macaya, " the great men who composed this court, regarded 



the culture of letters as beneath them, they 



found amongst the lower clergy men, who, knowing how to 

 read and write," prepared their causes and decisions for them. 

 Such, he continues, was the origin of the gentlemen of the 

 long robe (gens de robe) in France. These men soon became 

 invested with magisterial authority, and, at length, consti- 

 tuted the persons who composed the, so-called, parliament, or 

 court of justice ; after the original assemby had ceased to 

 exist. This court was, at first, held only in Paris, but in the 

 year 1454, Charles VII., for the purpose of facilitating the 

 hearing of appeals, instituted that which sat at Toulouse. 

 It was therefore, rather a court of justice, than such a repre- 

 sentative assembly as we understand by the term "Parliament." 

 For further information on this interesting subject, the reader 

 is referred to the " Essais Historiques sur Le Bigorre " of 

 M. Davezac-Macaya. 



