623 ICOSANBRIA. POLYGYNIA. Rubus. 
RU'BUS. # Cal. five-cleft : Petals five : Styles from the top 
of the germen: Drupa clustered, one-celled, fixed to a 
conical receptacle so as to resemble a berry. 
“ If this fair Rose offend thy sight. 
It in thy bosom wear ; 
’Twill blush to find itself less white, 
And turn Lancastrian there.” 
Mythologists tell us that the Rose was originally white, and that the warmer colour was. 
first given to it by the blood of Venus, from an accident thus described by Catullus 
44 While the enamour’d queen of joy 
Flies to protect her lovely boy, 
On whom the jealous war god rushes; 
She treads upon a thorned Rose, 
And while the wound with crimson flows, 
The snowy flow’ret feels her blood, and blushes.” 
As a token flower, the Rose has ever been deemed sacred to secrecy : hence to speak 44 under 
the Rose,” refers, (according to the definition of Brown in his Vulg. Err.) in society and 
compotation, to the ancient custom in symposiack meetings, of wearing chaplets of Roses 
about the head. Mythological writers afford us the following additional solution :— 
“ That the god of love made Harpocrates, the god of silence, a present of the first 
Rose, to bribe him not to divulge the secrets of his mother Venus.” Hence the Rose be¬ 
came a symbol of silence, and was usually placed above the heads of the guests in banquet¬ 
ing rooms, in order to banish restraint, and intimate that nothing would be divulged that 
was said “ sub Rosa 
44 4 Under the Rose ’ in days of old. 
Fond vows were seal’d, fond secrets told ; 
And still, when Love in eve’s calm hour 
Would wander to its favourite bower, 
And whisper in its amorous mood 
The thoughts it nursed in solitude, 
The dreams that loving hearts disclose. 
Are sacred uuderncath the Rose. 
And while the constant soul shall be 
Enamour’d of love’s secrecy, 
Through varying time’s unceasing range 
The language of the lip may change, 
Empires be won, and thrones decay’d, 
Yet never shall this emblem fade. 
For sacred still shall love repose 
Under that faithful flower— the Rose .” 
In Europe the Rose chiefly discloses its odoriferous treasures beneath the unclouded sky | 
to which the classic strains of Casimir happily allude:— 
44 Siderum sacros imitata vultus, 
Quid lates dudum, Rosa ? Delicatum 
Efler e terris caput, O tepentis 
Filia coeii. 
Jam tibi nubes fugiunt aquosae, 
Quas fugant albis Zephvri quadrigis; 
Jam tibi mulcet Boream jocantis 
Aura Favoni.” 
44 Child of the Summer, charming Rose , 
No longer in confinement lie; 
Arise to light; thy form disclose ; 
Rival the spangles of the sky. 
* (Rubu or ruber , Latin, rub, Celtic, red, from the colour of the fruit, and other parts. 
E.) 
