Romans till the time of Tournefort, when botany became a science, very little is known; but there can be no doubt that in the dark ages they were held in esteem by all who could procure them. When Saladin took Jerusalem in 1128 he would not enter the mosque of the Temple-then converted to a church by the Christians-till the walls had been thoroughly washed and purified with rose-water. Voltaire says that after the taking of Constantinople by Mahomet II., in 1453, the church of St. Sophia was washed with rose-water in a similar manner before it was converted into a mosque.

We read in the History of the Mogul Empire, by Father Catron, that the celebrated Princess Nourmahal filled an entire canal with rose-water, upon which she was in the habit of sailing along with the Great Mogul. The heat of the sun disengaged the essential oil from the rose-water. This was observed floating upon the surface of the water, and thus was made the discovery of the essence, otto or ottar, of roses. Formerly it was the custom to carry large vessels filled with rose-water to baptisms. Bayle relates, upon this subject, that at the birth of Rousard his nurse, on the way to church, let him fall upon a heap of flowers, and that at this instant the woman who held the vessel of rose-water poured it upon the infant. Roses were often, in the days of chivalry, worn by cavaliers at tournaments as an emblem of their devotion to love and beauty. The rose has been a favorite subject with the poets of all countries in all ages. It was dedicated by the Greeks to Aurora as an emblem of youth, from its freshness and revivifying fragrance; to Venus as an emblem of love and beauty, from the elegance of its flowers; and to Cupid as an emblem of fugacity and danger, from the fleeting nature of its charms and the wounds inflicted by its thorns. It was given by Cupid to Harpocrates, the God of Silence, as a bribe to prevent him from betraying the amours of Venus, and was hence adopted as the emblem of silence. The rose was for this reason frequently sculptured on the ceilings of drinking and feasting-rooms as a warning to the guests that what was said in moments of conviviality should not be repeated, from which what was intended to be kept secret was said to be told "under the rose." The Greek poets say that the rose was originally white, but that it was changed to red, according to some, from the blood of Venus, who lacerated her feet with its thorns when rushing to the aid of Adonis; and according to others, from the blood of Adonis himself.

The fragrance of the rose is said by the poets to be derived from nectar thrown over it by Cupid, and its thorns to be the stings of the bees with which the arc of his bow was strung. Anacreon makes their birth coeval with those of Venus and Minerva:

"When then, in strange, eventful hour,
The earth produced an infant flower,
Which sprang with blushing tinctures drest

And wanton'd o'er its parent breast,

The gods beheld this brilliant birth,

And hail'd the rose-the boon of earth."

Another fable relating to the birth of the rose is that Flora, having found the dead body of one of her favorite nymphs, whose beauty could only be equaled by her virtue, implored the assistance of all the gods and goddesses to aid her in changing it into a flower which all others should acknowledge to be their queen. Apollo lent the vivifying power of his beams; Bacchus

bathed it in nectar; Vertumnus gave its perfume; Pomona its fruits; and Flora herself its diadem of flowers. Other mythological writers relate that the beautiful Rhodante, Queen of Corinth, to escape the persecutions of her lovers, attempted to seclude herself in the temple of Diana; but, being forced by the clamor of the people from her sanctuary, prayed to the gods to change her into a rose, which still bears the blushes that dyed her cheeks when forced to expose herself to public gaze, and under which form she is still universally admired. A beetle is often represented on antique gems as expiring surrounded by roses; and this is supposed to be an emblem of a man enervated by luxury, the beetle being said to have such an antipathy to roses that the smell of them will cause its death. Pliny tells us that they garnished their dishes with these flowers, and cites the custom of wearing garlands of them at their feasts. Cleopatra received Antony, at one of her banquets, in an apartment covered with rose-leaves to a considerable depth; and Antony himself when dying begged to have roses scattered on his tomb.

The Roman generals who had achieved any remarkable victory were permitted to have roses sculptured on their shields. Rose-water was the favorite perfume of the Roman ladies, and the most luxurious even used it in their baths. The Turks believe that roses sprang from the perspiration of Mahomet, for which reason they never tread upon a rose-leaf or suffer one to lie on the ground. They also sculpture a rose on the tombstones of females who die unmarried. In an old mosaic in the church of St. Susan, at Rome, Charlemagne is represented kneeling and receiving from St. Peter a standard covered with roses. The custom of blessing the roses is still preserved in Rome, and the day on which the ceremony is performed is called Dominica in Rosa. The seal of Luther was a rose. In 530 St. Medard, Bishop of Noyon, instituted a festival at Salency, his birth-place, for adjudging annually the prize of a crown of roses to the girl who should be acknowledged by all her competitors to be the most amiable, modest, and dutiful in the village; and he had the pleasure of crowning his own sister as the first Rose Queen. This custom was continued to the time of Madame de Genlis. In the middle ages the knights at a tournament wore a rose embroidered on their sleeves, as an emblem that gentleness should accompany courage, and that beauty was the reward of valor. The French Parliament had formerly a day of ceremony called Baillee de Roses, because great quantities of roses were distributed. Shakespeare, who no doubt followed some old legend or chronicle, derives the assumption of the red and the white roses by the rival houses of York and Lancaster from a quarrel in the Temple Gardens between Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, and the Earl of Somerset, the partisan of Henry of Lancaster. Finding that their voices were getting too loud, Plantagenet proposes that they shall

adding,

"In dumb significance proclaim their thoughts;"

"Let him who is a true-born gentleman

And stands upon the honor of his birth,

If he supposes I have pleaded truth,

From off this briar pluck a white rose with me."

To which Somerset replies:

'Let him who is no coward nor no flatterer,
But dare maintain the party of the truth,
Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me."

Their respective followers gathered the different-colored roses; and hence tradition says these flowers were adopted as the badges of the houses of York and Lancaster during the civil wars which afterward desolated the country for more than thirty years. The Rosa Alba is said to have been the one chosen as the badge of the House of York and the Rosa Gallica as that of Lancaster. The York and Lancaster rose, which, when it comes true, has one half of the flower red and the other half white, was named in commemoration of the union of the two houses by the marriage of Henry VII. with Elizabeth of York.

Among historical reminiscences of the rose is this charming allegory: A Turkish poet, Abdulkadri, had the design of establishing himself at Babylon. The Babylonians were unwilling to receive him; but they dared not declare it to him openly. To make him comprehend their thoughts they passed before him with a vase filled with water, that he might understand that as the vase was full nothing could be added to it; also, their city was in the same manner filled with poets and learned men until there was no room left for another. Abdulkadri understood perfectly that enigma, and for his response he stooped, picked up the leaf of a rose that was on the ground, placed it carefully on the surface of the water in the vase, showing them that it kept its place without causing the water to overflow, though the vase was full. That act appeared so marvelous to the Babylonians that they regarded Abdulkadri as a man of superior genius, and they conducted him in triumph to the city.

XIV. THE BABOON AT HOME.

Captain Dayson had gone out one morning to see the sun rise in a very beautiful part of the desert. He says: "Suddenly I heard a hoarse cough, and on turning around saw distinctly in the fog a queer little old man standing near, and looking at me. I instinctively cocked my gun, as the idea of Bushmen and poisoned arrows flashed across my mind. The old man instantly dropped upon his hands, giving another hoarse cough, that evidently told a tale of consumptive lungs, snatched up something behind him, which seemed to leap on his shoulders, and then scampered off up the ravine on all fours. Before half this performance was completed I had discovered my mistake. The little old man turned out to be an ursine baboon, with an infant ditto, which had come down the kloof to drink. A large party of the old gentleman's family were sitting up the ravine, and were evidently in a debate as to the cause of my intrusion. I watched them through my glass, and was much amused at their grotesque and almost human movements. Some of the ladies had their olive branches in their laps, and appeared to be 'doing their hair;' while a patriarchal-looking old fellow paced backward and forward with a sort of fussy look. He was evidently on sentry, and seemed to think himself of no small importance. This estimate of his dignity did not appear to be universally acknowledged, as two or three young baboons sat close behind him watching his proceedings. Sometimes, with the most grotesque movements and expressions, they would stand directly in his path, and hobble away only at the last moment. One daring youngster followed close on the heels of the patriarch during the whole length of his beat, and gave a sharp tug at his tail as he was about to turn. The old fellow seemed to treat it with the greatest indifference, scarcely turning round at the insult. Master impudence was

about repeating the performance, when the pater, showing that he was not such a fool as he looked, suddenly sprang round and, catching the young one before he could escape, gave him two or three such cuffs that I could hear the screams that resulted therefrom. The venerable gentleman then chucked the delinquent over his shoulder and continued his promenade with the greatest coolness. This old baboon evidently was acquainted with the practical details of Solomon's proverb. A crowd gathered around the naughty child, which, childlike, seeing commiseration, shrieked the louder. I even fancied I could see the angry glances of the mamma as she took her dear little pet in her arms and removed it from the repetition of such brutal treatment."

We are told likewise of a tame baboon whose great delight was in frightening the Kafir women. On selecting his victim, he would rush at her as if he intended to devour her, and away she would fly for dear life, dropping her basket or hoe. But he soon caught hold of her, and, seizing her by one leg, stared her in the face, mewing and grinning, and moving his eyebrows at her like an incarnate fiend. When her screams at length brought assistance, in the shape of a Kafir cur, Jocko sprang up a tree, and, resting secure upon an upper branch, gazed upward and around with a quiet contemplative air, as though he had sought this elevated position for the sole purpose of meditating on the weakness of baboon and animal nature generally, but more particularly on the foibles of excited Kafir curs.

The baboon when tame, however, is sometimes of more use than to frighten women, who he knows will throw down the hoe instead of breaking his head with it. He is made to discover water in the desert when his master would perhaps perish without it. A little salt is rubbed on his tongue to irritate his thirst, and then he is let go. He runs along a bit, scratches himself, shows his teeth, takes a smell up wind, looks all around, picks up a bit of grass, smells or eats it, stands up for another sniff, canters on, and so on. Wherever the nearest water is he is sure to go.

XV.-WILLIAM PITT. MACAULAY.

Pitt was emphatically the man of parliamentary government, the type of his class, the minion, the child, the spoiled child, of the House of Commons. For the House of Commons he had an hereditary, an infantine love. It was when the House of Commons was to be convinced and persuaded that he put forth all his powers.

Of those powers we must form our estimate chiefly from tradition; for of all the eminent speakers of the last age Pitt has suffered most from the reporters. Even while he was still living critics remarked that his eloquence could not be preserved, that he must be heard to be appreciated. There is, however, abundant evidence that nature had bestowed on Pitt the talents of a great orator; and those talents had been developed in a very peculiar manner: first, by his education; and secondly, by the high official position to which he rose early, and in which he passed the greater part of his public life.

At his first appearance in Parliament he showed himself superior to all his contemporaries in command of language. He could pour forth a long succession of round and stately periods, without premeditation, without ever pausing for a word, without ever repeating a word, in a voice of silver clearness, and

His

with a pronunciation so articulate that not a letter was slurred over. declamation was copious, polished, and splendid. In power of sarcasm he was probably not surpassed by any speaker, ancient or modern; and of this formidable weapon he made merciless use. In two parts of the oratorical art which are of the highest value to a minister of state he was singularly expert. No man knew better how to be luminous or how to be obscure. When he wished to be understood he never failed to make himself understood. He could with ease present to his audience, not perhaps an exact or profound, but a clear, popular, and plausible view of the most extensive and complicated subject. Nothing was out of place; nothing was forgotten. Minute details, dates, sums of money, were all faithfully preserved in his memory. Even intricate questions of finance when explained by him seemed clear to the plainest man among his hearers. On the other hand, when he did not wish to be explicit— and no man who is at the head of affairs always wishes to be explicit―he had a marvelous power of saying nothing in language which left on his audience the impression that he had said a great deal. He was at once the only man who could open a budget without notes, and the only man who, as Wyndham said, could speak that most elaborately evasive and unmeaning of human compositions, a king's speech, without premeditation.

XVI.-WARWICK CASTLE. H. W. BEECHER.

Walking along a high park wall which forms one part of the town, or rather which stops the town from extending further in that direction-the top covered with ivy, that garment of English walls and buildings-I come to the gateway of the approach. A porter opens its huge leaf. Cut through a solid rock, the road, some twenty feet wide, winds for a long way in the most solemn beauty. The sides, in solid rock, vary from five to twenty feet in height-at least so it seemed to my imagination, the only faculty that I allowed to conduct me. It was covered on both hands with ivy, growing down from above and hanging in beautiful reaches. Solemn trees on the bank, on either side, met overhead, and cast a delicious twilight down upon my way, and made it yet softer by a murmuring of their leaves. Winding in graceful curves, it at last brings you to the first view of the castle, at a distance of some hundred rods before you. It opens on the sight with grandeur. On either corner is a huge tower, apparently one hundred and fifty feet high. In the center is a square tower, called properly a gateway; and a huge wall connects this central access with the two corner towers. I stood for a little, and let the vision pierce me through. Who can tell what he feels in such a place? Primeval forests, the ocean, prairies, Niagara, I had seen and felt; but never had I seen any pile around which were historic associations blended not only with heroic men and deeds, but savoring of my own childhood. And now too am I to see, and understand by inspection, the things which Scott has made so familiar to all as mere words-moats, portcullises, battlements, keeps or mounds, arrowslit windows, watch-towers. They had a strange effect upon me. They were perfectly new, and yet familiar old friends. I had never seen them, yet the moment I did see all was instantly plain. I knew name and use, and seemed in a moment to have known them always.

I came up to the moat, now dry and lined with beautiful shrubs and trees,