Roses of Yesterday 471 
In England the payment of a Rose as rent was 
often known. The Bishop of Ely leased Ely house 
in 1576 to Sir Christopher Hatton, Queen Eliza- 
beth's handsome Lord Chancellor, for a Red Rose 
to be paid on Midsummer Day, ten loads of hay 
and ten pounds per annum, and he and his Episco- 
pal successors reserved the right of walking in the 
gardens and gathering twenty bushels of Roses yearly. 
In France there was a feudal right to demand a 
payment of Roses for the making of Rose water. 
Two of our great historians, George Bancroft 
and Francis Parkman, were great rose-growers and 
rose-lovers. I never saw Mr. Parkman's Rose 
Garden, but I remember Mr. Bancroft's well; the 
Tea Roses were especially beautiful. Mr. Bancroft's 
Rose Garden in its earliest days had no rivals in 
America. 
The making of potpourri was common in my 
childhood. While the petals of the Cabbage Rose 
were preferred, all were used. Recipes for making 
potpourri exist in great number ; I have seen several 
in manuscript in old recipe books, one dated 1690. 
The old ones are much simpler than the modern 
ones, and have no strong spices such as cinnamon 
and clove, and no bergamot or mints or strongly 
scented essences or leaves. The best rules gave 
ambergris as one of the ingredients ; this is not 
really a perfume, but gives the potpourri its staying 
power. There is something very pleasant in open- 
ing an old China jar to find it filled with potpourri, 
even if the scent has wholly faded. It tells a story 
of a day when people had time for such things. I 
