DESCRIPTIVE LIST OF FLOWERING SHRUBS. 441 
birds ; the Rose is supposed to burst forth from its bud at 
the song of the nightingale. 
“ A festival is held in Persia, called the Feast of Roses, 
which lasts the whole time they are in bloom. 
‘ And all is ecstasy, for now 
The valley holds its Feast of Roses ; 
That joyous time when pleasures pour 
Profusely round, and in their shower 
Hearts open, like the season’s Rose, — 
The flowret of a hundred leaves, 
Expanding while the dew-fall flows, 
And every leaf its balm receives !’ 
“¢Persia is the very land of Roses.—“ On my first en- 
termg this bower of fairy land,” says Sir Robert Kerr 
Porter, speaking of the garden of one of the royal palaces 
of Persia, “I was struck with the appearance of two Rose- 
trees, full fourteen feet high, laden with thousands of 
flowers, in every degree of expansion, and of a bloom and 
delicacy of scent that imbued the whole atmosphere with 
exquisite perfume. Indeed, I believe that in no country 
in the world does the Rose grow in such perfection as in 
Persia; in no country is it so cultivated and prized by the 
natives. Their gardens and courts are crowded by its 
plants, their rooms ornamented with vases filled with its 
gathered bunches, and every bath strewed with the full- 
blown flowers, plucked with the ever-replenished stems, 
* * * * But in this delicious garden of Negaaristan, 
the eye and the smell are not the only senses regaled by 
the presence of the Rose. The ear is enchanted by the 
wild and beautiful notes of multitudes of nightingales, 
whose warblings seem to increase in melody and softness 
with the unfolding of their favorite flowers. Here, indeed, 
the stranger is more powerfully reminded that he is in the 
genuine country of the nightingale and the Rose.” — 
(Persia in Miniature, vol. iii.) 
“Sir William Ouseley, accompanied his brother, the am- 
bassador, on a visit to a man of high rank at Teheran; 
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