Rose doth grow
wilde in many hedges of Lancashire in great abundance, even as Briers do
with us in these southerly parts, especially in a place of the countrey
called Leyland, and in a place called Roughford, not far from Latham."
It was, therefore, not a new gardener's plant in his time, as has been
often stated. I have little doubt that this is the White Rose of York;
it is not the R. alba of Dr. Lindley's monograph, but the double variety
of the British R. arvensis.

The White Rose has a very ancient interest for Englishmen, for "long
before the brawl in the Temple Gardens, the flower had been connected
with one of the most ancient names of our island. The elder Pliny, in
discussing the etymology of the word Albion, suggests that the land may
have been so named from the White Roses which abounded in it--'Albion
insula sic dicta ab albis rupibus, quas mare alluit, vel ob rosas
albas quibus abundat.' Whatever we may think of the etymological
skill displayed in the suggestion . . . we look with almost a new
pleasure on the Roses of our own hedgerows, when regarding them as
descended in a straight line from the 'rosas albas' of those far-off
summers."--_Quarterly Review_, vol. cxiv.

The Damask Rose (No. 5) remains to us under the same name, telling its
own history. There can be little doubt that the Rose came from Damascus,
probably introduced into Europe by the Crusaders or some of the early
travellers in the East, who speak in glowing terms of the beauties of
the gardens of Damascus. So Sir John Mandeville describes the city--"In
that Cytee of Damasce, there is gret plentee of Welles, and with in the
Cytee and with oute, ben many fayre Gardynes and of dyverse frutes. Non
other Cytee is not lyche in comparison to it, of fayre Gardynes, and of
fayre desportes."--_Voiage and Travaile_, cap. xi. And in our own day
the author of "Eoethen" described the same gardens as he saw them: "High,
high above your head, and on every side all down to the ground, the
thicket is hemmed in and choked up by the interlacing boughs that droop
with the weight of Roses, and load the slow air with their damask
breath. There are no other flowers. The Rose trees which I saw were all
of the kind we call 'damask;' they grow to an immense height and
size."--_Eoethen_, ch. xxvii. It was not till long after the Crusades
that the Damask Rose was introduced into England, for Hakluyt in 1582
says: "In time of memory many things have been brought in tha