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THE MORAL OF FLOWERS. 
THE DOG-ROSE. 
ROSA CANINA. 
-“ Impervious grows the briar 
Cover’d with thorns and roses, mingled like 
Pleasures and pains, but shedding richly forth 
Its fragrance on the air.” 
If the lily of the valley conveys the idea of cloistered 
purity, the wild rose may as fitly represent that, which 
escapes unsullied from the trying contact of every¬ 
day life. 
Its blossoms open in June, and through this and the 
following month it “ bears its blushing honours thick 
upon it,” and is, as truly, the acknowledged and prime 
favourite of our hedgerows and thickets, as the cultivated 
species are of the gay parterre. When beholding the 
first rose of the season, who but recalls the time when 
he bore off the prize with no ordinary pleasure, esteeming 
it the choicest flower of his simple nosegay. It is indeed 
full of early associations; and, could we “ speak in 
numbers,” this seems the very language in which we 
should address it in riper years: — 
