6 The Rose Garden. 



whisper to freeze up slander's hateful slime and destroy that venom which, when 

 once circulated, proves so fatal to human happiness!" The Poetical Language of 

 Flowers, by Thomas Miller ; Bogue, London. 



It appears also that the Greeks used this flower medicinally, and cultivated it 

 with the view of extracting the perfume from its petals. Theophrastus, who lived 

 about 300 years before the Christian era, tells us, in the sixth book of his History of 

 Plants, " There are many varieties of Roses. Most of them consist only of five leaves 

 but some have twelve leaves, and some near Philippi have even as many as a hundred 

 leaves. Men take up the plants from Mount Pangaeum (and they are very numerous 

 there) and plant them near the city. And the inner petals are very small, for the 

 fashion in which the flowers put out their petals is that some form the outer rows and 

 some the inner ones, but they have not much smell nor are they of any great size, and 

 those with only five leaves are the most fragrant, and their lower parts are very thorny. 

 But the most fragrant Roses are in Cyrena, on which account the perfumes made 

 there are the sweetest." Athenceus, Bohris Class. Lib., vol. iii., p. 1089. 



Theophrastus also informs us that it was common to set fire to the Rose-trees in 

 Greece ; and that unless this practice was resorted to they would not produce any 

 flowers. Is the writer in earnest ? If so, this does not say much for the knowledge 

 of the art of culture in those days. But although flowers were so much used on 

 special occasions by the Greeks, it is generally admitted that gardening, considered 

 as an art, was neglected by this people. 



If the Greeks considered the Rose worthy of adoration, the Romans were by no 

 means less lavish in the praises they bestowed on it. They regarded it with that 

 veneration and enthusiasm which the high encomiums passed on it by a people they 

 so much admired might be supposed to give rise to. It has been said by some writers 

 that the Romans acquired their taste for these flowers from the Egyptians, who, 

 during the early ages of the Republic, sent quantities of them to Rome every year 

 But it appears to me more probable that the taste was acquired from the Greeks 

 although the Egyptians might have administered to and further developed it. It was 

 customary with both Greeks and Romans to bring in flowers, Roses especially, at 

 their Bacchanalian feasts, placing them on the tables, and ornamenting their persons 

 with them, believing they preserved them from the intoxicating influences of wine. 

 Virgil, "the prince of Latin poets," makes frequent mention of the Rose in his 

 writings. In the opening of the Fifth Pastoral he contrasts the pale sallow to the 

 blushing Rose : 



Puniceis humilis quantum saliunca rosetis ; 



Judicio nostro tantum tibi cedit Amyntas. Ecloga 5, ver. 17, 18, 



In the Georgics he speaks of" Paestum Roses with their double spring ": 



Forsitan et, pingues hortos quae cura colendi 



Ornaret, canerem, biferique rosaria Psesti. Georg. lib. 4, ver. 118, 119. 



