Beautiful Flowering Shrubs 



Eglantere"; Spenser echoed, "Sweet is the Eglantine"; 

 while Dryden used the strongest possible simile to 

 express his sense of its sweetness 



" The fresh eglantine exhaleth a breath, 

 Whose odours were of power to save from death." 



"Not even among the roses," says Dean Hole, "shall 

 we find a more delicious perfume. The thurifer wears 

 a sombre cassock, but no sweeter incense rises heaven- 

 wards." While as for its beauty "What can the 

 world produce equal to the June rose? The common 

 brier, the commonest of all, offers a flower which, 

 whether in itself, or the moment of its appearance at 

 the juncture of all sweet summer things, or its history 

 and associations, is not to be approached by anything 

 a millionaire could purchase." 



Late in the 'eighties, when the cult of the Rose was 

 greatly to the fore, it was borne in on Lord Penzance, 

 a great lover and grower of roses, that many of the 

 new varieties, beautiful and wonderful though they often 

 were, were wanting in certain attributes of a perfect 

 Rose, and in particular they frequently lacked the grace 

 of scent a very serious lack since, admittedly, fragrance 

 is " the very soul of the Rose." 



"The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem 

 For that sweet odour which doth in it live." 



(Shakespeare.) 

 The new Roses, too, were often very short lived, and 



* Richard Jefferies. 

 172 



