CULTURE OF THE ROSE.

CHAPTER IX.

GENERAL CULTURE OF THE ROSE.

S before stated, the Rose was the theme of the earliest poets of antiquity; and it was doubtless one of the first plants selected to adorn the gardens which were laid out around the new habitations constructed upon the exchange of the wandering for a civilized mode of life. The most ancient authors upon husbandry whose works are extant, have all treated of the culture of Roses. Theophrastus among the Greeks; and among the Romans, Varro, Columella, Palladius, and Pliny. To Pliny are we specially indebted for information on this subject, as the entire fourth chapter of the twentieth book of his Natural History is devoted to Roses; and they are also occasionally mentioned in other parts of the work. But after all the information thus obtained, much yet remains to be desired; and although we find in other ancient authors some curious facts bearing upon other points in the history of the Rose, they are mostly so general in their character as to give us very little insight into the actual culture of the Rose at those periods.

The profuseness with which they were used among the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, and other ancient nations, in their religious solemnities, their public ceremonies, and even in the

ordinary customs of private life, would lead us to suppose, and with some degree of correctness, that roses were very abundantly cultivated by them all; and we are inclined to think that their cultivation was then far more general than at the present time, although the art of producing them was in its infancy. However surprising in other respects may have been the progress of the culture of roses within forty years, particularly in France, Holland, and Belgium, there can be little doubt that, although the Romans were acquainted with a much smaller number of varieties than the moderns, yet flowers of those varieties were far more abundant than the aggregate quantity of flowers of all the varieties of roses cultivated at the present day. It cannot be positively asserted, that the Hybrid Perpetual Roses of the present day were unknown at Rome, since the gardeners of that city practised sowing the seeds of the Rose, by which mode many of the most remarkable varieties of that class have been obtained by modern cultivators. The Romans, however, preferred to propagate by cuttings, which produced flowers much sooner than the seed-bed.

But, though the Romans may have had roses of the same species with some of those which we now cultivate, it is scarcely probable that these species could have continued until this period, and escaped the devastation attendant on the revolutions of empire, or the more desolating invasions of the Huns and Goths. Thus it is, that those roses of Pæstum to which allusion is so frequently made by ancient writers, and which, according to Virgil and Pliny, bloomed semi-annually, and were common in the gardens of that city, are not now to be found. Jussieu and Laudresse, two French gentlemen, successively visited Italy, with the express object of finding this twice-bearing Rose in Pæstum or its environs, yet, notwithstanding their carefully prosecuted researches, they could find no traces of it whatever.

Although the number of varieties known to the Romans was very limited, they had discovered a method of making the blooming season continue many months. According to Pliny, the roses of Carthage, in Spain, came forward early and bloomed in

winter; those of Campania bloomed next in order; then those of Malta; and lastly those of Paestum, which flowered in the Spring and Autumn. It was probably the blooming of this last species, which the gardeners of Rome discovered (in Seneca's time) the secret of retarding by a certain process, or of hastening by means of their warm green-houses.

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In the first part of this work, we have cited many passages from ancient authors, which show to what enormous extent was carried the use of roses by the Romans on certain occasions. is difficult to credit, at this day, the relation of Nero's extravagance (which is however attested by Suetonius), when it is told that in one fête alone he expended in roses only more than four millions of sesterces, or one hundred thousand dollars. It would be no easy matter, even at the present period of abundant 'cultivation of roses, to obtain from all the nurseries of England, France, and America together, roses sufficient to amount to so large a sum.

The Romans derived the use of this flower from the Greeks. In Greece, and throughout the East, roses were cultivated, not only for the various purposes we have mentioned, but also for the extraction of their perfumes. Among the many plans which they adopted for preserving the flower, was that of cutting off the top of a reed, splitting it down a short distance, and enclosing in it a number of rose-buds, which, being bound around with papyrus, prevented their fragrance from escaping. The Greeks also deemed it a great addition to the fragrance of the Rose, to plant garlic near its roots. The island of Rhodes, which has successively borne many names, was particularly indebted to the culture of roses for that which it bears at this day. It was the Isle of Roses, the Greek for Rose being Podov,--Rodon.

Medals of Rhodes, whose reverse impressions present a rose in "bloom on one side and the sunflower on the other, are to be found even now in cabinets of curiosities.

Extravagance in roses, among the Romans, kept pace with the increase of their power, until they at length desired them at all seasons. At first they procured their winter's supply from

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compelled to keep in readiness a certain number of vessels to be laden with boxes or vases of rose-plants, so prepared as not to bloom before their delivery at Rome. The cost of roses thus delivered in Rome must have been immense, but we do not find a single passage in ancient authors which can give any light on this point; they only tell us that nothing for the gratification of luxury was considered too costly by the wealthy Roman citizens. Nor do they afford more positive information as to the species of Rose cultivated on the borders of the Nile, to gratify this taste of the Romans. According to Delile, there were found in Egypt, at the time of the French expedition into that country, only the White Rose and the Centifolia or hundred-leafed-two species not very susceptible of either a forcing or retarding culture. The only Rose known at that time, which bloomed in the winter, was the Rose of Pæstum, referred to by Virgil, as "biferique rosaria Pasti,”—and which was probably the same as our monthly Damask Rose, and which produced in Egypt and Rome flowers at all seasons, as the Damask does now with us, under a proper mode of culture.

The extent to which the culture and commerce of roses was carried among the Romans, is shown by the fact, that, although they had confounded the tree and its flowers under one namethat of Rosa, they, nevertheless, gave particular appellations to the gardens, or ground planted with rose-bushes. They were termed a Rosarium, or a Rosetum. Ovid says, "Quot amœna Rosaria flores. The dealer in roses was also designated by the distinctive appellation of Rosarius.

In the latter part of the decline of the Roman Empire, when paganism still existed to a great degree, there arose a people, who formed as it were the connecting-link between the ancient and modern world-a people who acknowledged but one Supreme Ruler, and his sole vicegerent Mahomet; a people whose origin was among the wildest tribes of Ishmael's descendants, who possessed in a great degree the luxuries of civilized life, and among whom the arts, sciences, and agriculture were very flour