ROSE. 125 
curtains, carpets, and silk hangings. The most 
distinguished unmarried females of the place de- 
fended this fortress, which was attacked by the 
youth of the other sex. The missiles with which 
both parties fought consisted of apples, almonds, 
nutmegs, lilies, narcissuses, violets, but chiefly of 
Roses, which supplied the place of artillery. In- 
stead of musketry, they discharged volleys of Rose- 
water and other liquid perfumes, by means of 
syringes. This entertainment attracted thousands 
of spectators from far and near, and the emperor 
Frederick Barbarossa himself accounted it one of 
the highest diversions that he had ever enjoyed. 
In like manner, St. Medard, bishop of Noyon, 
in France, instituted in the sixth century a festival 
at Salency, his birth-place, for adjudging one of the 
most interesting prizes that piety has ever offered 
to virtue. This prize consists of a simple crown 
of Roses, bestowed on the girl who is acknowledged 
by all her competitors to be the most amiable, 
modest, and dutiful. The founder of this festival 
enjoyed the high gratification of crowning his own 
sister as the first Rose-queen of Salency. The 
lapse of ages, which has overturned so many 
