The Rose. 
33 
and bending before the scorching rays of the sun, withered and 
dead ! The young girl wept for her folly ; and the following 
morning she gathered her garland early. 
Another equally appropriate fable from the same collection 
tells of a pious man, who, one day, was sorrowfully pacing up 
and down his garden, and doubting the care of Providence. 
At length he stood transfixed before a rose-bush ; and thus 
spake the spirit of the rose unto him : “ Do I not animate a 
beautiful plant—a cup of thanksgiving, full of fragrance to the 
Lord, in the name of all flowers, and an offering of the sweet¬ 
est incense to Him ? And where do you find me ? Amongst 
thorns. But they do not sting me; they protect and give me 
sap. This thine enemies do for thee; and should not thy spirit 
be firmer than that of a frail flower ?” Strengthened, the man 
went thence, and his soul became a cup of thanksgiving for his 
enemies. 
Oriental races appear to entertain some superstitious ideas 
respecting the sanctity of the rose, and evidently rely upon its 
efficacy to obliterate all desecrating powers. Thus, when Sala- 
din reconquered Jerusalem, in 1128, he would not enter the 
Mosque of the Temple, which the Christians had been using 
as a church, until the walls had been thoroughly washed and 
purified with rose-water. Voltaire also relates that after the 
taking of Constantinople by Mahmoud II., in 1453, the church 
of St. Sophia was cleansed in a similar manner with rose-water, 
before it was converted into a mosque. 
The Catholic Church has always regarded the rose as a 
mystical flower ; and formerly it was the custom with her to 
employ it at every ceremony from birth to burial. Large 
vessels filled with rose-water were used at baptisms, in illustra¬ 
tion of which practice, Bayle relates that at the baptism of 
Ronsard, his nurse, on the way to the church, let him fall upon 
a heap of flowers ; and at that same instant the woman who 
held the vessel of rose-water poured it upon the infant. “ All 
this,” says Bayle, “ has been regarded as a happy omen of the 
great esteem in which his poems would one day be held.” 
At marriages and other festivities, in the middle ages, the 
guests wore chaplets of roses. The author of “ Perceforet,” 
describing an entertainment, says, “ Every person wore a chap¬ 
let of roses on his head. The Constable of France (and 
3 
