42 A BOOK ABOUT ROSES 



From Spenser to Tennyson there is no great English 

 chorister who has not loved and lauded her. I have 

 pages of extracts in my commonplace-book, but they 

 are, I doubt not, familiar to most of my readers, and 

 the assertion which I have made asks no further 

 proof. 



The excellent beauty of the Rose has not only 

 been appreciated in all times {se^nper), but in all 

 climes. 



2. Uhiqtte} — Born in the East, it has been diffused, 

 like the sunlight, over all the world. A flower, writes 

 Pliny, known to all nations equally with wine, myrtle, 

 and oil. It is found in every quarter of the globe — 

 on glaciers, in deserts, on mountains, in marshes, in 

 forests, in valleys, on plains, and on the sands of the 

 sea. The Esquimaux, as Boitard tells us in his 

 interesting ' Monographic de la Rose,' adorn their 

 hair and their raiment of deer and seal skin with the 

 beautiful blossoms of the Rosa nitida, which grows 



^ I cannot write this word without recording an anecdote, which has 

 not, I believe, been published, but which well deserves to be. It was 

 told to me by an artillery officer, that a gentleman, dining at the mess, 

 Woolwich, mistook the Latin trisyllable Ubique on the regimental 

 plate for a French dissyllable, and delighted the company by exclaim- 

 ing, 'Ubique! Where's Ubique? — never heard of that battle ! ' A 

 very similar question was put to myself, showing to a young friend, 

 among some old curiosities, a medal which had been given to my 

 grandfather at school, and on which were engraved his initials, the 

 date, and the word MerentV — * Merenti ! ' he exclaimed, * how one 

 forgets history ! ' (he might have said grammar also), ' 7vhen ivas that ? ' 



