come!" The garden from whence the sounds proceeded belonged to Herr Muller, the master of the school which stood opposite to his house, and was the same that Siegbert's brothers and sisters attended. Schools were not then what they are now. The art of printing was not yet invented; books were consequently scarce and very dear. The youth of those days were only very imperfectly taught reading, writing, singing, and accounts. Many branches of knowledge, which are now considered a necessary part of education, were then unheard of. Herr Muller had one child, a daughter of nine years of age, who had from her earliest infancy been weak and delicate. The poor child suffered from contraction of the muscles of one leg, which prevented her from walking, and at times gave her great pain. Little Johanna's bodily deficiencies were, however, more than compensated by the powers of her mind. She was quick and intelligent beyond her years, and her education had been carefully attended to by her fond father. Johanna also possessed a peculiarly sweet and pleasing voice, which her father had diligently cultivated. Siegbert listened with delight until the sweet sounds had ceased. He then said to himself: "I should really think it better to be rich Herr Muller's daughter, than a poor little bird that the first bird-catcher that comes may take in his net, and twist its head off. And I would rather be here than across the sea, into which many a bird, tired with flying, must fall and be drowned." When all the food had disappeared, the birds and rabbits acted like ordinary friends and acquaintances, who, when they have eaten enough, turn their backs upon their host and go their way. Johanna looked sorrowfully after her pets as they went, some walking, others flying lightly through the air; and when they were all gone, she took up two pointed sticks which lay beside her, and began, with their help, to push herself forward. At first she moved along quite easily, and Siegbert watched her progress with fresh delight. All at once the little chair stood still. Johanna in vain exerted all her strength; it would not move from the spot. After many fruitless attempts, she laid down the sticks, and leaned back exhausted and panting for breath. After a while she said in a plaintive voice: "Father is in the school, and mother is gone out, and Eva is in the kitchen, where she cannot hear me call. Oh ! how long must I wait before anybody will see after me and help me!" There followed upon her calls of invitation to her pets, such a fluttering, rustling, and flapping of wings, as excited the young gardener's curiosity, and induced him to peep through a hole in the wooden partition which separated the two gardens. He could distinctly see the little girl seated in an easy chair, which was set upon wheels, and surrounded by a multifarious assemblage of animals, consisting of hens and chickens, white and coloured doves, bold sparrows, redstarts, finches and yellow hammers, unwieldy geese and waddling ducks, pretty little rabbits, and a splendid peacock with two peahens; all scrambling for the food which Johanna distributed amongst them with a liberal hand. The schoolmaster's garden resembled a paradise, in which the various animals feared neither man nor each other. On Johanna's right shoulder a saucy little finch was perched, and on her left a snow-white dove sat wiping her beak. As she spoke, the little girl mournfully laid her Two sparrows and a tiny goldfinch were pecking head on her hand, and sighed deeply. In a short the crumbs from her lap, whilst three playful time she raised it again, and said earnestly—“ Oh rabbits nibbled cabbage-leaves from her hand. that I was a bird; or," she added after a pause, When the peacock had eaten enough, he spread" if I had but a pair of duck's or goose's legs! I his magnificent tail, which glittered in the sun, and the geese and ducks gabbled in noisy chorus. Siegbert could not take his eyes off this lovely picture. He entirely forgot his work, and his mother's injunctions. "How I should like to have one of those beautiful peacock's feathers!" said he, wistfully. "How rich the schoolmaster must be, to be able to buy such an expensive creature! Is not the peacock a prince among the birds? No, a king, the emperor himself, for does not he wear a crown upon his head? and are not the blue feathers on his neck far more gorgeous than the emperor's purple mantle, and his tail more splendid than the sceptre and the imperial globe? But that bulfinch is really quite shame should be very thankful even for them." And two large tears ran down her pale thin cheeks. Siegbert, who had just thought Johanna one of the most enviable of human beings, now compassionated her from the bottom of his heart. "Oh!" said he to himself, "I had quite forgotten that the poor little girl has a contracted leg, and cannot walk a step. To think that she would be thankful for a pair even of duck's or goose's legs! Why, I have two good legs, with which I can scramble over hedge and ditch; yes, or jump over this fence, if I like. My legs are truly more precious to me than the handsomest wheel-chair, and all the peacocks, ducks, geese, fowls, doves, and rabbits in the world." Siegbert now put his mouth to the hole he had been peeping through, as to the mouth-piece of a speaking-trumpet, and called out-" Johanna, shall I come over to you and push your chair along?" "Who is there ?" said the little girl in surprise, turning her face towards the new-fashioned speaking trumpet. 66 It is I!" answered the boy, "your new neighbour; my name is Siegbert." "But I do not at all know you," objected Johanna, timidly. 'We can soon mend that," answered Siegbert; and the next moment he was astride upon the fence which separated the two gardens. "There!" he said, with a smile; "now you see who I am. Shall I jump down and push you along, or not?" "But you will prick yourself with the briars which grow along the fence," said Johanna, anxiously. "Oh, never mind, if that is all!" returned Siegbert, letting himself drop among the bushes. Look! how you have run the thorns into you," cried the little girl in a distressed voice, as she saw Siegbert stuck fast in the midst of the thorn bushes, and striving with all his might to free himself from them. "A thorn will not kill me," said Siegbert, making his way triumphantly out of the briars. "But your hands are bleeding," exclaimed Johanna, "and your left cheek is bleeding too!" "It is only the skin," said Siegbert, in a conIsolatory tone, hiding the smart with a forced smile, "and that soon heals again;" and he caught hold of the back of the chair to push it along. The little girl hastily stopped him. "Let me see your hands and your cheek," she said, in her sweet persuasive tones. Siegbert obeyed, and Johanna began with a skilful though somewhat trembling hand to draw out the thorns for him. "Does it hurt very much ?" she asked, looking anxiously in his face. "Only like a great bite," answered Siegbert, smiling again, and twinkling the tears out of his eyes. "The thorns must come out," said the young doctress, continuing her operations, "else they would fester, and that would last much longer, and hurt a great deal more. There! that is the last; I told you before how it would be-poor Siegbert!" The stout, hearty boy looked, in comparison with the pale and delicate Johanna, like the full moon beside the last quarter-a contrast that struck Siegbert himself. Do you not get enough to eat ?" he exclaimed; you look as pale and thin as a farthing candle.' 66 σε My poor leg is the cause of that," answered Johanna; "not that I have too little to eat.” And you have very little strength, too," continued Siegbert; "for only look, with one hand and with a very slight push, I can send your chair forward; whilst you quite tire yourself, and cannot move from the spot." "That also proceeds from my lame leg," sighed the little girl. "How "That is very strange," said Siegbert. can the weakness of one leg make you so pale and thin and feeble ?" "When one member suffers, my father says, the other members suffer with it," replied Johanna, gravely. "Yes, that is true," nodded Siegbert; "for when my little brother Winfried, who is, as I may say, a member of us, had the smallpox and was very ill, we all suffered with him, mother especially. That was a sad time! But your garden is much prettier than ours. We have hardly anything but weeds and stinging nettles." "My father says," answered Johanna, "that everything which God has created is of some use, though we do not always know what." "Yes," said Siegbert, laughing, "the thorns in your fence are very good for sticking into one, but for nothing else. The rose-bushes and gooseberry-bushes are spiteful fellows too, and wish no one well." "Oh, it is not right of you," said Johanna, reprovingly, "to find fault with what God has made. If you took pains to observe how beautifully he has created everything, you would not speak in that way. Have you ever noticed that each plant has different leaves, some round, some narrow, some long leaves ? one is jagged at the edge, another quite plain; one is smooth and shining, and another thick and woolly; one is light green and another dark. Just hold up a leaf to the light, and you will see that it has slender veins passing through it in all directions, which are its blood-vessels." "How very clever you are!" said Siegbert, in astonishment. "How do you know all this ?" "My father has taught me to examine everything, however small; and since I have done so, I never find the time too long, when I am alone in the garden or in the house. I watch the busy ants and bees, and see how the spiders spin their webs and catch flies in them, and how the birds carry straws and feathers to their nests, and teach their young ones to fly; and many other pretty things besides." "I have never troubled myself about these matters," said Siegbert, "nor my father either. To be sure, my father is a linen-weaver and common-councilman, and cannot attend to leaves and birds, and ants and bees, and such like vermin. Your father being a musician and schoolmaster, these things are quite right for him." "Oh!" cried Johanna, zealously, "Solomon was a great and wise king, and yet he could speak of the cedar that grows upon Lebanon, and of the hyssop that springs out of the wall. My father told me all this, and he never says anything that is not true." 66 Oh, but kings have not as much to do as a linen-weaver and common-councilman of Naumburg," answered Siegbert. "All that they need do, is to sit upon a golden throne, holding the sceptre and the imperial globe in their hands; and to eat and drink a great deal, and ride in a gilt coach or on a coal-black horse." "How simply you talk!" exclaimed Johanna. "Have you never heard how king Solomon had to sit from early morning till late in the evening on the judgment-seat, and decide the causes brought before him ?" Mrs. Wolf's voice was now heard in the next garden, calling, "Siegbert, Siegbert! where can you possibly be ?" "Here!" answered the boy as loud as he could, Įtion of its recipient's right to his crown. leaving hold of Johanna's chair. Thus Alexander III sent one to Louis the Young of "As soon as I may, I will come back again, if France; Urban v gave one to Johanna of Sicily; you would like it," he said; and scrambling the Elector Frederic of Saxony, Luther's friend, through the thorns, he speedily disappeared over received one; and Henry VIII of England, the the fence, and ran to tell his mother where he had defender of the faith, was honoured by two such been, and all that had happened. Master Wolf roses. As we write, the newspapers announce that and his wife had, as may be supposed, no objec-the papal nuncio to the Tuileries has brought one tion that their children should be intimate with as a gift to the Empress Eugenie. so well-brought-up a child as the schoolmaster's little daughter. As, however, the way over the paling and through the thorns was by no means a convenient one, a little doorway was, by mutual consent, made in the fence, through which the children, as well as their parents, could visit each other whenever they pleased. In early times, rose water was used in France at the baptisms of children of the nobles. The Mussulmen also employed it largely in the consecration of their mosques. Thus, after the taking of Constantinople, the church of St. Sophia, prior to its being converted into a place of worship for the false prophet, was washed throughout with rose water; and after the fall of Jerusalem, in 1188, Saladin would not enter the Temple till its walls had, in a similar manner, been cleansed with odoriferous fluid. MORE ABOUT THE ROSE. HISTORIANS and poets furnish us with abundant In our day there are some three thousand speevidence that the rose, even in the darkest periods | cies and varieties of the rose recognised by florists; of the middle ages, was not altogether forgotten. but the points of distinction among many of these Of the numerous customs that served to preserve are only evident to the practised eye of the conthe rose in men's affections and memories, we se-noisseur. The training of the rose has been carlect a few. Among the first may be mentioned ried to its furthest development in France, while the festival of the Rose Maiden of Salency, which no inconsiderable progress in the same field has was established by St. Medarbus, Bishop of Noyon, also been made in England. in the middle of the sixth century. Its object was to present the most deserving maiden of the place every year with a garland of roses and twenty-five livres. Property was left for this purpose by the bishop, from which the prize was supplied, and the expenses of the festival paid. Similar rose-festivals used to be held at Canon, St. Sauveur, Nancy, Nantes, and many other French towns. The mightiest impulse to the cultivation of the rose was given by the Empress Josephine at the commencement of the present century. She suggested to Dupont, the head gardener at Malmaison, to have a bed of the rarest species of roses laid out in the form of every letter of her name. Dupont also was the founder of the renowned conservatory of roses in the garden of the Luxembourg, on In the parliament of France there was a cele-whose improvement the indefatigable Hardy labration, called La Baillée des Roses, whose origin, as well as the time of its discontinuance, are alike unknown. At these festivals the peerage of France were accustomed to offer their allegiance to the parliament. In Provence the 1st of May was kept in honour of the queen of the may, who, decked out with roses and garlands, used to occupy a throne at the entry of the chief thoroughfares, whilst her companions at the foot of the throne levied contributions in her honour from all that passed by. boured for a quarter of a century. The other most celebrated conservatories in France are those of Rouen, Lyons, and Versailles; in the last, small rose trees may be seen with from twenty to thirty different varieties grafted on them. In Italy, the rose garden of Villarest, at Monza, has a wellmerited reputation. Many new species have been introduced into England, and have multiplied in the soil. As an example of the surprising height that a rose tree may reach, we may mention the fact, The rose is prominent as an emblem in the stated in Zelter's correspondence with Goethe, arms of many princes of olden time, as the princes that a court gardener in Sans-souci had trained one of Lippe and the dukes of Saxony. The white rose by the side of his house thirty Rhenish feet high. of York and the red rose of Lancaster played an You had to ascend a flight of fifty steps in order important part in English history. Luther had a to look out from the gable window upon its superb rose on his seal. Many towns take their names crown of flowers. Still more wonderful is the from the rose, such as Rosenau, Rosenthal, Rosen- account which the Abbé Berleze gives of an Itaberg, and Rosenfeld. The custom of the free- lian rose tree. He saw, in 1819, at Caserta, near masons of adorning themselves with roses sprung Naples, a hedge rose, which had been planted near undoubtedly from the middle ages. On the axe the foot of a poplar, sixty feet high, and which of the secret society of the Vehm was the figure had then clambered up to the extreme branches of of a knight with a bunch of roses in his hand; and its companion tree. În a book, called the "Rose whenever a member of this terrible body looked on Garden," we have a description of the ne plus a rose, he was bound to kiss it. In the architec-ultra of these rose giants, which stands in the ture of the same period the rose is very conspi cuous. The fourth Sunday in Lent used to be known in Rome as the rose Sunday. On this day the Pope consecrated a golden rose, which was sent either to a church or to some crowned head. In the latter case it was regarded as the Pope's recogni marine garden of Toulon. It is about forty-two years old, having been sent thither by Bonpland in 1813. Originally planted in a pot, it soon began to droop; but when it was transplanted into the soil, it rapidly recovered, and grew so mightily that it is now perhaps the largest of all known rose trees. In 1833 the stem of this tree mea sured 1 foot 3 inches round at the soil; it has singly. The Rosa parvifolia, commonly known as the champagne rose, and which makes a most beautiful nosegay, flourishes considerably in the neighbourhood of Dijon, and bears small full flowers of a dark red colour, which grow single. The Rosa Gallica is one of the species that yields numerous varieties of all colours, but principally that known by the name of Rosa provincialis, which may be white, red, or crimson. In the eastern valleys of the Pyrenees the moss rose blooms abundantly, of which an extraordinarily beautiful variety is assiduously cultivated in England under the name of the nutmeg rose. England reckons only six species of roses among her domestic plants. In the woods of the northern counties the Rosa involuta grows, with its In considering the extent of the kingdom in dark leaves and large flowers, sometimes red and which this queen of flowers reigns, we learn from sometimes white. If the flowers of this rose be several writers on natural history that the rose rubbed in the hands, they yield a turpentiny smell, only flourishes between the twentieth and the which is attributed to the circumstance of their seventieth degrees of latitude. But this seems being generally grown near pine and fir trees. In to be inaccurate, as much so as the assertion that some districts the Rosa sabini, the Rosa villosa, the original home of the rose must be sought for and the dog rose, grow very plentifully. The in the western Caucasus, between the Rhion and flowers of the villosa, which are either red or the Kuban. It flourishes indeed over all the in-white, always grow in couples. The neighbourhabited globe, and in all likelihood has continually been spreading itself. Yet it must be acknowledged that single species of the rose confine themselves within narrow districts, several growing nowhere but upon some one mountain or in some single valley. Thus the Rosa Polliana is found only upon Mount Baldo, in Italy; the Rosa Lyonii only in a certain district of Tennessee; while the dog rose flourishes indiscriminately in Europe, Asia, and America. Germany, though not originally rich in roses, reckons some very interesting specimens among its children, such as the Rosa turbinata, whose large full petals are arranged like a nosegay round an ovary, and the Rosa arvensis, which is generally full of large red flowers. hood of Belfast generates the small Rosa Hibernica, for the discovery of which a botanist gained a prize of fifty guineas, as it really was a new domestic plant. In the remotest north-east of Europe, on an island so bare of vegetation that its inhabitants are obliged to feed their sheep and horses upon dried fishes, we find the Rosa rubiginosa with a beautiful cup-shaped flower, and which grows single. In Lapland, underneath coverings of snow, flourish the small, glittering, and stronglysmelling flowers of the Rosa majalis, which charming species is a domestic in Sweden and both the other Scandinavian kingdoms. Here also grows the Rosa rubella, with flowers of a particularly deep red colour. The mountains of Switzerland and the Alps are Coming back now to the south, we find several uncommonly rich in their domestic roses. In ad- remarkable species in Italy and Spain. The Rosa dition to the wild rose, there is the Rosa Alpina, Poliniana, with its fine large purple flowers, that yielding a full red flower, and which by a certain grow in clusters of two or three, may be found in training produces a considerable number of varie-abundance near Verona. The moss rose and the ties. The Rosa spinulifolia grows here too in Rosa Hispanica grow luxuriantly in Spain; the abundance, and produces a pale red flower of mid-latter has light red flowers, which open in May. dling size. Its stem and leaves are prickly, and there is a faint smell of turpentine issuing from it, a circumstance worthy of scientific investigation. Among the roses of the Alps may be mentioned also the Rosa rubrifolia, whose small red stem, branches, and leaves, together with its gorgeously deep red flowers, give it a great prominence among the plentiful greens that surround it. A modern botanist has calculated that there are nineteen species of the rose indigenous to France. In the southern departments the Rosa eglanteria is very abundant, and its gold-coloured petals frequently deepen into orange. The Rosa spinosissima flourishes widely in the sandy districts of the south; its petals are white, sometimes with a yellowish tint, and many beautiful varieties are produced from it. In the forest of Auvergne, and in the Vosges, the Rosa cimamomea greatly abounds. It takes its name, not from any fragrance resembling cinnamon, but entirely from the colour of its stems. Its flowers are small, red, and grow The Rosa semperflorens is very common in the Baleares, and grows wild there as in Barbary. Its glittering green leaf sparkles among its flowers, which are small, though numerous, and of unusual fragrance. In Africa, on the border of the Sahara, and in the plain below Tunis, one meets with the moss rose, whose white flowers scatter their strong perfume far and wide. This charming species is also found in Morocco, Mogador, Madeira, and in Egypt. The dog rose also, which is everywhere to be met with in Europe, grows in great luxuriance in Egyptian soil. The Rosa Abyssinica has recently been discovered in Abyssinia. It is an evergreen, bearing, red flowers. Asia has a greater number of species and varieties than all the rest of the world. According to the most recent researches, thirty-nine species are to be found in this quarter of the globe, of which fifteen belong to China alone. First of all, there is the Rosa semperflorens, with tripartite leaves |