240 WILD FLOWERS. 



virtues ascribed to the rose, but it is more wonder- 

 ful still that I should have to record the dislike 

 felt to it by any one. Yet such, history assures us, 

 was the case with no less distinguished a person 

 than Mary de Medicis, who could not endure the 

 flower; while the infamous Due de Guise was 

 so affected with dislike at the sight of it, that 

 he fainted. I cannot, however, help supposing 

 that there is some error in this account, and that 

 Catherine de Medicis must have been the lady in- 

 dicated ; judging from natural causes it is not im- 

 probable that she might have inherit ed, as a family 

 peculiarity, the dislike which her uncle exhibited to 

 the flower. 



Didymus, the Alexandrian (" Geoponika"), some- 

 what paradoxically says, after enumerating the 

 varied virtues of this flower, " I am really persuaded 

 that the rose is something more than human ! " 

 Yet in the nineteenth century, the rose can even be 

 dispensed with, in the manufacture of rose-water ; 

 we ignore the necessity of gathering otto of roses 

 from so uncertain a field as that in which the 

 blossoms grow ; chemistry has discovered that the 

 refuse of the organic kingdom is the source from 

 which we may henceforth obtain our " essence of 

 roses;" the Bulgarian rose- grounds may grow sterile 

 and bleak, the Vale of Kashmir become arid and 

 bare, but we heed it not. The rose-essence of our 

 future years will be procured from the offal which 

 was before a nuisance to us, just as our vanille is 

 in future to be extracted from pit-coal; and our 

 essence of pears from creosote, ends of old ropes, and 

 other such matters ! 



