122 DROPS FROM FLORA’S CUP. 
The rose has ever been associated'with beauty. 
Its beauty, however, passes with its perfection, 
and when we have watched a choice bud, till it has 
burst forth and become perfect, we have only to 
gaze upon its beauty and enjoy its fragrance for a 
few hours and its freshness lias gone, and we sigh 
that such loveliness, sucli fragrance, should be so 
transient so evanescent. How touchingly beauti¬ 
ful the custom in other climes of strewing roses 
over the bier of the early dead! a true emblem of 
their youth, their fading loveliness. The rose is 
supposed to burst into bloom at the. nightingale’s 
song, and Eastern writers have associated the most 
beautiful of flowers with the sweetest of birds. 
‘ The nightingales warbled their enchanting notes, 
and rent the thin veils of the rose-bud and the 
rose.’ Sir Robert Porter remarks, ‘that in no 
country in the world, the rose grows to such per¬ 
fection as in Persia,’ and in no country is it so 
cultivated and prized by the natives. Their gar¬ 
dens, courts, and apartments, are ornamented with 
them, and every bath is strewed with the full¬ 
blown flowers. The ear too, is enchanted with 
the beautiful notes of the nightingales. Here, 
indeed, the stranger is powerfully reminded, that 
he is in the genuine country of the nightingale and 
the rose. ’ 
Varied and beautiful origins have been given to 
