40 A BOOK ABOUT ROSES 



their dead, and in adorning the tombs of their 

 heroes, then, as now, associated with human 

 sorrow and joy. 



^ How much of memory dwells amidst thy bloom, 



Rose ! ever wearing beauty for thy dower ! 

 The bridal day, the festival, the tomb, 

 Thou hast thy part in each, thou stateliest flower ! ' 



Such are my slender memories of classical allusion 

 to the Rose; but I do not lament this scantiness, 

 because ' I have no opinion,' as Mr Lillyvick re- 

 marked concerning the French language, of Greek 

 or Roman floriculture. It was the only art in which 

 these nations did not excel. We know nothing of 

 Greek gardening, and that which we know of Roman 

 is a disappointment The arrangement was formal 

 and monotonous. They had ^come to build stately, 

 but not to garden finely': and upon terraces and 

 under colonnades, around bathrooms and statue 

 groups, they placed horrible mutilations of evergreen 

 shrubs, hacked by a diabolical process, which they 

 called the Ars Topiaria, into figures of fishes and 

 beasts and fowls, such as our own forefathers once 

 rejoiced in, under the system of gardening surnamed 

 the Dutch. The Roman gardener was actually called 

 Topiarius ; and this terrible tree-barber went proudly 

 round his arboric menagerie with the trenchant shears, 

 pointing snouts, docking tails, and gaily disfiguring 



