§& The Old <F(gses {% 



Lawrence. In their masterpieces, the beauty and the 

 glorious colouring of the living flowers of over a hundred 

 years ago are immortalized. But best of all, see them as I 

 see them now, loved and tended in a secluded enclosure. 

 This garden is famed, yet only a minority of those who 

 come to see the treasures it contains visit this rose garden, 

 which is filled with the beauty and the fragrance of the 

 old roses. This morning I got up very early to see what is 

 surely one of the fairest sights in the world — the roses 

 ' spreading themselves towards the sun-rising.' 



The Red Provence, the old cabbage rose (R. centi folia) 

 was for centuries the Queen of all roses. With what 

 royal grace she wears her gloriously uneven petals, a 

 thousand times lovelier than the faultless and almost dis- 

 tressingly * tidy ' roses of to-day. How satisfying, too, are 

 her generous broad down-curled leaves ' somewhat snipt 

 about the edges,' to quote Gerard's description of them. 

 She thoughtlessly fails to grow the long stalks which seem 

 essential for modern ' indoor decoration,' she nearly 

 always droops, although only slightly, her big, lovely head 

 (another fault !), she does not bloom perpetually, and her 

 leaves lack the delicacy admired in modern roses (con- 

 sequently they are virtually immune from disease). Is it 

 for these reasons that this queen, who once ruled with the 

 lilies in every garden, great and small, has been deprived 

 of her rightful place ? Yet this was the rose of Chaucer's 

 day, the rose of Provence. 



' Of Roses there were grete wone 

 So faire were never in Rone ' 



which reminds us of the Rhone, the great river of 

 Provence, and the tradition that this glorious rose was 



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