Mogul. The heat of the weather disengaged the essential oil from the rose water: this was observed floating 
upon the surface of the water ; and thus was made the discovery of the essence, otto, or attar, of roses. 
Formerly it was the custom to carry large vessels filled with rose water to baptisms. Bayle relates, upon this 
subject, that at the birth of Monsard, his nurse, in the way to church, let him fall upon a heap of flowers ; 
and that at this instant the woman who held the vessel of rose water poured it upon the infant. All this, 
says Bayle, has been since regarded as a happy omen of the great esteem in which his poems would one day 
be beheld ! Roses were often, in the days of chivalry, worn by the cavaliers at tournaments, as an emblem 
of their devotion to love and beauty. 
Roses are intolerant of smoke, and hence they never thrive, either in or near large towns. 
Loudon’s Arboretum Britannicum. 
Among the similies to which the rose has given occasion, perhaps none is more beautiful than that 
well known passage of Ariosto : — 
La verginella e simile alia rosa, 
Che ’n bel giardin su la nativa spina, 
Mentre sola e sicura si riposa, 
Ne gregge ne pastor se le awicina; 
L’ aura soave e 1’ alba ruggiadosa, 
L’ acqua e la terra al suo favor s’ inchina, 
Gioveni vaghi e donne innamorate, 
Amano averne e seni e tempie ornate. 
Ma non si tosto dal materno stelo 
Rimossa viene, e dal suo ceppo verde, 
Che quanto avea dagli uomini, e dal cielo 
Favor, grazia, e bellezza tutto perde. 
“The maiden is like the rose reposing alone and secure upon its native thorn in a beautiful garden ; 
neither flock nor shepherd approaches it ; the sweet breeze and the dewy morn, water and earth, unite in 
its favour ; handsome youths and enamoured damsels desire to have their bosom and temples adorned with it. 
But no sooner is it removed from the maternal stalk, and from its green support, than it loses all the favour, 
grace, and beauty, that it had in the eyes of men.” 
For the following extracts we are indebted to that delightful work the “Flora Domestica.” The Rose 
as well as the myrtle, is considered as sacred to the Goddess of Beauty. 
In our country, in some parts of Surrey in particular, it was the custom, in the time of Evelyn, to 
plant roses round the graves of lovers. It is the universal practice in South Wales to strew roses and other 
flowers over the graves of departed friends. — We have seen, within these few years, the body of a child 
carried to a country church for burial, by young girls dressed in white, each carrying roses in their hands. 
Monestellus cites an epitaph, in which Publia Cornelia Anna declares that she had resolved not to survive 
her husband in desolate widowhood, but had voluntarily shut herself up in his sepulchre, still to remain 
with him with whom she had lived twenty years in peace and happiness : and then orders her freed-men 
and freed-women to sacrifice there to Pluto and Proserpine, to adorn the sepulchre with roses, and to 
feast upon the remainder of the sacrifice. 
Persia is the very land of roses. “ On my first entering this bower of fairy land,” (says Sir Robert Kerr 
Porter, speaking of the garden of one of the royal palaces of Persia,) “I was struck with the appearance 
of two rose trees, full fourteen feet high, laden with thousands of flowers, in every degree of expansion, 
and of a bloom and delicacy of scent, that imbued the whole atmosphere with exquisite perfume. In- 
deed, I believe that in no country in the world does the rose grow in such perfection as in Persia; in no 
country is it so cultivated and prized by the natives. Their gardens and courts are crowded by its 
plants, their rooms ornamented with vases filled with its gathered bunches, and every bath strewed with 
the full blown flowers plucked with the ever replenished stems But in this delicious 
garden of Negaaristan, the eye and the smell are not the only senses regaled by the presence of the rose. 
The ear is enchanted by the wild and beautiful notes of multitudes of nightingales, whose warblings seem to 
increase in melody and softness, with the unfolding of their favorite flowers. Here indeed the stranger is 
most powerfully reminded, that he is in the genuine country of the nightingale and the rose ! ” 
( Persia in Miniature, Vol. iij.) 
Lord Byron has taken advantage of the various fictions and customs connected with the rose, and 
