The Rose. 
37 
many high and mighty ones who came to witness or take part 
in this entertainment was the German Emperor Barbarossa; 
and he is stated to have declared it to have been one of the 
greatest diversions that he had ever enjoyed. 
These attractive customs were doubtless derived from the 
East: somewhat similar ones have existed in Persia if/om time 
immemorial. Sir William Ouseley tells us, in his “Travels in 
Persia,” that when he entered the flower garden belonging to 
the governor of the castle near Fassa, he was overwhelmed 
with roses; and in the present days, when these beloved 
flowers are in full bloom, bands of young men parade the 
streets of the cities, singing, dancing, playing, and pelting 
those they meet with showers of roses. In return for these 
amusements, the spectators reward them with trifling gra¬ 
tuities, with which they then betake themselves to places of 
public entertainment. 
In Smyrna they demonstrate their love for the queen of 
flowers by calling one of their streets, after her, “ The Street 
of Roses.” The Londoners also, it is true, have several Rose 
Streets; but, alas! none of them are so fragrant as their name 
would seem to imply. 
Amongst many nations of antiquity it was customary to 
crown bridal couples with wreaths of white and red roses; and 
in the processions of the Corybantes, Cybele, the protecting 
deity of cities, was pelted with these odoriferous blossoms. 
The Roman generals who had achieved any remarkable vic¬ 
tory were permitted to have roses sculptured on their shields. 
Rose-water was the favourite perfume of the Roman ladies, 
and the most luxurious even used it in their baths. In that 
wonderfully entertaining old romance, “The Golden Ass” of 
Apuleius, the Latin prototype of “ Gil Bias,” the hero, Lucius, 
recovers his human form by eating some of the roses from the 
crown which the priest of Isis carried in the procession annu¬ 
ally held in honour of the goddess Cybele. 
A writer in the “ Household Words,” in an article containing 
some exquisite bits about those most exquisite of all things, 
roses, speaking of a certain autumnal specimen of the tribe, 
thus humorously tells its tale: “ It is,” she says, “ a turncoat 
flower, whose history I blush to relate, but averts your censure 
like other fair offenders; for, if to its lot some floral errors fall, 
