OUR QUEEN OF BEAUTY 41 



the face of nature, with the pleased demeanour of 

 some cheerful savage cleverly tattooing his dearest 

 friend. And history, repeating itself, tells us, through 

 Mr Pope in The Guardian, how an eminent cook 

 beautified his country-seat with a coronation dinner 

 done in evergreens, the Champion flourishing in 

 hornbeam at one end of the table, and the Queen in 

 perpetual yew at the other. * But I, for my part,' 

 writes Lord Bacon, * do not like to see images cut 

 out in junipers and other garden stuff : they be for 

 children.* ^ 



It is, however, enough to have shown that although 

 the floral light of these Greeks and Romans was dim 

 and feeble, it revealed to them the supreme beauty of 

 the Rose ; and we shall find, as we pass down the 

 highways of history from their times to our own, that 

 against this Royal supremacy no voice has been ever 

 raised. It has been reverently acknowledged always; 

 but its great champions and laureates have been 

 found, of course, among the poets — among those who 

 love beauty most, and in whose hearts a love of the 

 beautiful rings the 'manifold soft chimes' of song. 

 In all lands and languages they have sung the Rose, 

 and in none with sweeter service than our own. 



^ The Japanese are experts in the training of Pines, and we have in 

 Mr James Herbert Veitch's charming book, **A Traveller's Notes,' 

 the photograph of a marvellous specimen of their art — a tree represent- 

 ing a sailing junk, of which the hull is 35 feet in length ! 



