None of the trees thou plantest, friend,
Shall follow thee, when life is o'er,
Save the black cypress, which shall bend
Above thy grave, and deck thy door."

A

But look! how bright the contrast between the cypress grove and the spot it encloses. This is really a labyrinth of roses! plot of ground, laid out in circular form and intersected with devious paths, apparently running every where, is completely overgrown with varieties of the queen of flowers. Ah! I never can see a rose without an emotion. Even the iron-tempered Roman loves it and calls it the fairest of the floral tribe. Nay! he loves all flowers. Has he not deified a woman only to be Flora, the goddess of flowers? And does he not celebrate his flower-feast in her honor every year? Virgil loved them, and describes them con amore. Cicero draws many choice images from the flowerpeople, and cultivated them with his own hands. Tibullus and Propertius confess in many places their admiration of the

"Stars, which in earth's firmament do shine."

Ovid knew all about them, and perhaps rivals Virgil in describing them. Call to mind his narrative of the "Rape of Proserpine," which, as Cicero said in one of his most elegant orations, Roman school-boys were taught to believe happened on the island of Sicily, near the grove of Enna. The great orator thus pictures the spot. "It is an elevated place, lofty, I may say; on the top of which the ground is levelled into a smooth plain, crossed with perennial streams. On every side, the ascent is abrupt and rugged. But upon it are lakes and numerous groves, and the most brilliant flowers at every season of the year.' We will let Ovid describe the scene:

"It was a valley, shady, lonely:

Its wondrous silence broken only

By silvery tinklings from the fountain,

Which tumbled down the neighboring mountain,

And scattered showers of pearly spray

Upon the grass, the livelong day;

And there the earth's delicious breast

Was painted, like a gorgeous vest,

With countless flowers, which softly shone

In every hue to nature known;

She saw them, as, with naked feet,

She danced along that meadow sweet,

And cried in voice of silvery measure,

'Come, maidens, seize the flowery treasure.'
Beguiled with this, their trivial spoil,

Each toils too fast to feel the toil.

Some into baskets crowd the blossoms,

Some fill their laps and some, their bosoms.

One gathers marigolds; one treads

Among the matted violet-beds;

One, stopping in her girlish talk,

Breaks with her maids the poppy's stalk.

The hyacinth arrested some,

And amaranths of endless bloom.
Spurge-olive, thyme and marjoram
Into their laps the spoilers cram;
But most the queenly roses claim,
While some choose flowers without a name,
But Proserpine prefers a share

Of crocuses and lilies fair,

And, seeking these, she rambles on

Until she finds herself-alone."

You know what happened then. The grim king of the shades had soon after made her queen of a realm, which was any thing but a "flowery kingdom.'

But we must return to the thicket of roses. You see around you every variety of them. Sacred as they are to the goddess of beauty, they are as various as beauty itself. Here is a kind, of which you have often heard; transplanted hither from the rosaries of Pæstum. Its hue is of the deepest crimson and its fragrance is penetrating. The color of the rose, you know, is here believed to have been originally white and miraculously changed to its present prevailing tinge. The question is discussed in those beautiful lines of the Anthology:

"What gives the rose its crimson hue?
Ah! laughing Cupid, either you

Your merry smile upon it threw;

Or else, perhaps, Aurora fair

Plucked one rich tress of purple hair
And tinged the rose with beauty rare;

Or trickling blood, by Venus shed,
When, caught upon its thorns, she bled,
Has left its stain of ruby red."

Here are other red roses of the choicest kinds; although I can show you nothing, which will surpass what Propertius aptly calls "the victorious roses of odorous Pæstum." Here is the rose of Præneste, celebrated also for filberts; of Campania, productive of wine and earthen ware; of Trachyn; of Tibur, the country residence of Horace; of Tusculum, where Cicero and Pliny have both built beautiful villas. Here, too, is the white rose of Alabanda, which, like that of Pæstum, bears twice a year. Here is the sweet-briar, also, which the Romans call the dog-rose.

You may have no idea of the extent, to which the rose is a favorite among the Romans. They cultivate it in all their gardens. They strew their tables with it at their feasts. They make with it both essences and oils. They flavor and perfume wine with it. They stuff cushions and couches with it. Beds of roses are no fiction at Rome. They stitch roses together and bind them in wreaths around their heads. They sprinkle corpses and graves with them. It is even common to leave a legacy of money in trust

The Latins had no dead language to fall back upon, for incomprehensible names in botany.

to a friend or townsman, to provide a yearly "feast of roses" at the tomb of the testator. Then in Spring or Fall, or both, but most commonly in May, friends of the departed

"Bring flowers, young flowers"

to his grave and partake of a banquet there, leaving wreaths upon the tomb. Tibullus once sang thus:

"Some aged friend shall bring to mind
The love I bore him-deep and holy-
And chains of freshest roses bind,

When in the dust I slumber lowly."

As for the custom of tying garlands around the head at revels, it is universally practiced, under the impression that it cools the brain and either mitigates or retards intoxication. These garlands are usually of red and white roses mixed, sometimes with the addition of lilies and parsley. Horace, no doubt, often shouted,

" Bring hither wine and perfumed oils and flowers—
The flowers, too short-lived, of the pleasant rose;"

and Propertius echoed the sentiment:

"The sparkling banquet shall my table deck
While wreaths of roses wander down my neck;"

and Ovid added:

"The shining board is hidden under roses."

One of Cleopatra's tricks on the delicious Anthony, was the placing on his head, during one of their sumptuous tete-a-tetes, a wreath of roses, steeped in narcotic drugs. The Roman lover often sallies out, slightly intoxicated and crowned with roses, to serenade his mistress. In short, the revel and the rose are inseparable. Nero, you recollect, was wont to compel his favorites to give public banquets, at which all the low women of Rome served as table attendants. The distribution of roses, at one of these, to the guests, costs the host somewhat more than $120,000, if Suetonius is to be believed.

Verres, the plunderer of Sicily, was particularly fond of roses. He travelled in a litter, borne by eight persons. Through the interstices of his cushions gleamed the red leaves of Maltese roses. A wreath of roses was around his head; a necklace of roses thrown over his shoulders; a bag of the finest net-work, full of roses, tied just under his nose. Thus he received the municipal officers of the various towns through which he passed.

The rose forms a subject of comparison, to which the Roman poets are very fond of resorting. "Let her lips and breath match the roses of Pæstum," says Martial, of his heroine. "To live among roses," means in Rome, as you would infer, to live in voluptuous delight. As roses and lilies are generally seen growing

together in Roman gardens, there is peculiar force to the universal comparison of blushes and roses. This accounts for Virgil's strange but exquisite expression:

"The purple shame stole o'er her conscious face,

As 'mid their own fair lilies roses glow."

The similitude of an English poet,

"Her cheeks were lilies dipped in wine,"

is reversed by Propertius:

"Like rose-leaves swimming in pure milk."

But one of the most ludicrous metaphors ever known, is made use of by Claudian, who is only providentially saved from extravagance in every line he writes. He is describing a lady scratching her head and compasses the idea by portraying her as

Combing her tresses with her rosy thumb !"

To be finished in the next number.]

AN INCIDENT AT SEA.

Upon the wide Atlantic

The sun of April shone,

Alone in the whole hemi phere,

Our ship stole slowly on:

The wind just breathed, old Ocean slept,

His deep breast scarcely stirred,

The ripple on the vessel's side

Was all the sound we heard;

For not to slacken sheet or sail

The mariners were called,

And death, who hovered round our bark,
Even their rough hearts appalled:

In fever he had tracked our path,

Upon the viewless air;

And now, although invisible,

We felt that he was there:

Unthought of save from storm and wave,

He waited for his hour,

When sternly he aroused him from

The hiding of his power:

Full half a score within his grasp,

Already prostrate lay,

The boldest spoke in words of dread,

The rest looked their dismay.

But long before he came in might

We watched his gentler pace,-
A stripling from green Erin's isle,
With wan and haggard face,
Came with his mother and his sire,
By penury exiled,

In hope to find a home and bread
In the far western wild:
Yet even hope had died amid

The stifling prison hold,

Where pent-up wretches sink beneath

Discomforts manifold;

And now he prayed the Merciful
Would hasten his release,

And longed to lay him down and sleep
Where the weary are at peace.
He had his wish. The flame expired
That flickered in his breast,
And its last flash seemed one of joy,
As welcoming his rest!

The fervid daughters of his land,

Around his lowly bed,

Raised loud the wail of coronach,

And wept upon the dead;

But the mother who had watched him as She saw him wasting lie,

Was bowed by sleeplessness and woe,

And had not strength to cry:

Her task fulfilled, her hope extinct,
She sunk beside him there,-

Her spirit, worn by misery,
Was broken by despair!
All night she lay unconsciously:
Her breathing but revealed

That still she lived, till morning dawn

The fount of tears unsealed.

But mourning on the ocean wave,

With pestilence around,

Must not endure in outward show,-
The wasted corse was bound

Within the shroud where it had lain,

And to the vessel's side

Was borne. The mother followed it,

All weakness she denied,

Her heart was nerved so desperately!

A monument she stood,

So pale, so rigid, as she gazed

Upon the swelling flood: