YOEK AND LANCASTER 

 EOSE. 



Rosa Damascena . 



HY, it may be asked, is this old 

 favourite of the English garden 

 presented as a rose of Damas- 

 cus? The reason is that the 

 : true York and Lancaster rose is 

 a variety of Rosa Damascena; 

 and if in this little work we 

 recognise Latin names at all, 

 we must he as nearly correct 

 as possible. There are several 

 distinct roses known as repra 

 senting the two great families 

 and the healing of their feuds, 

 one of the best known being a 

 variety of Rosa Gallica. But 

 the " proper " symbolic flower is a striped damask rose, 

 with green branches and pubescent leaves, and the habit 

 of the old monthly roses. 



As Shakespeare tells the tale it makes a profound im- 

 pression. We see the foundations of the feud laid in 

 the success of Bolingbroke and the cruel murder of the 

 king as the curtain falls on the fine historical tragedy 

 of " Richard II." We see it ripen in the first part of 

 " King Henry VI." in the famous scene in the Temple 



