e dog is not a part of natural history, but of
human history; and the real rose grows in a garden. All must regard the
elephant as something tremendous, but tamed; and many, especially in our
great cultured centres, regard every bull as presumably a mad bull.
In the same way we think of most garden trees and plants as fierce
creatures of the forest or morass taught at last to endure the curb.

But with the dog and the rose this instinctive principle is reversed.
With them we think of the artificial as the archetype; the earth-born as
the erratic exception. We think vaguely of the wild dog as if he had run
away, like the stray cat. And we cannot help fancying that the wonderful
wild rose of our hedges has escaped by jumping over the hedge. Perhaps
they fled together, the dog and the rose: a singular and (on the whole)
an imprudent elopement. Perhaps the treacherous dog crept from the
kennel, and the rebellious rose from the flower-bed, and they fought
their way out in company, one with teeth and the other with thorns.
Possibly this is why my dog becomes a wild dog when he sees roses, and
kicks them anywhere. Possibly this is why the wild rose is called a
dog-rose. Possibly not.

But there is this degree of dim barbaric truth in the quaint old-world
legend that I have just invented. That in these two cases the civilized
product is felt to be the fiercer, nay, even the wilder. Nobody seems to
be afraid of a wild dog: he is classed among the jackals and the servile
beasts. The terrible cave canem is written over man's creation. When we
read "Beware of the Dog," it means beware of the tame dog: for it is the
tame dog that is terrible. He is terrible in proportion as he is tame:
it is his loyalty and his virtues that are awful to the stranger, even
the stranger within your gates; still more to the stranger halfway over
your gates. He is alarmed at such deafening and furious docility; he
flees from that great monster of mildness.

Well, I have much the same feeling when I look at the roses ranked red
and thick and resolute round a garden; they seem to me bold and even
blustering. I hasten to say that I know even less about my own garden
than about anybody else's garden. I know nothing about roses, not even
their names. I know only the name Rose; and Rose is (in every sense
of the word) a Christian name. It is Christian in the one absolute
and primordial sense of Christian--that it comes down from the age
of pagans. The rose