The Rose. 
3 * 
demanded a new sovereign from Allah, because the drowsy 
lotus would slumber at night. At first the maiden queen was 
snowy white, and encircled with a protecting guard of thorns ; 
but the poor nightingale fell into such an ecstacy of love over 
her charms, and so recklessly pressed his lovelorn and musical 
heart against those cruel thorns, that his blood, so far as it 
could trickle into the blossom’s bosom, dyed it crimson ; and, 
as the poet justly observes, “are not the petals white at the 
extremity where the poor little bird’s blood could not reach ?” 
The above-named Gulistan, so famed in Persian story, is the 
place where so many roses were grown that it was a five days’ 
camel-ride through the great garden. Thence was brought the 
precious attar for the Shah’s own use, and thence came daily 
fresh-plucked petals for the bed of the Sultana, who could not 
sleep if the rose-leaves were too much crumpled. 
Jackson, in his “Journey,” says that the roses of the Sinan 
Nile, or “Garden of the Nile,” are unequalled, and that mat¬ 
tresses are made of their leaves for men of rank to recline on. 
In this famous Gulistan it was, too, that they discovered 
how to manufacture the renowned rose wine—a glass of which 
wonderful liquor would make the sternest monarch merciful, or 
make the sickliest mortal slumber amid his pains ; and it was 
in this same Gulistan that they all knew what were those “five 
secrets of Allah ” which the five petals of the first rose signified. 
The Turks believe that roses sprang from the perspiration of 
Mahomet, who christened his white mare which brought him 
from Medina, “Werda,” after the snowy blossom—and for 
that reason they never tread upon a rose-leaf, or suffer one to 
lie upon the ground. They also, it is said, sculpture a rose on 
the tombstones of females who die unmarried. The story of 
the learned Zeb, who intimated by a rose-leaf that he might 
be received into the silent academy of Amadan, is a popular 
one amongst Oriental nations. The vacant place for which he 
applied having been filled up before his arrival, the president 
intimated this to him by filling a glass so full of water that a 
single additional drop would have made it run over; but Zeb 
contrived to place the petal of a rose so delicately upon the 
water that it was not disturbed in the least, and was rewarded 
for his ingenious allusion by instant admission into the society. 
Father Catron, in his “ History of the Mogul Empire,” says 
