ge
thrill, as of a solemn vanished life, sweep over you; for so surely as
you live, know that in ancient days the footsteps of the rose-bearing
worshipper went before you through that narrow pass, performing, by so
doing, the rite typical of new birth, revival, and the Covenant. She is
the cavern, the secret lair of life and the casket in which that one
great arcanum and impenetrable secret of motherhood is forever
concealed--forever and forever. They found it hidden--those priests of
old--in Woman and in the Rose, in fruits, and in all that lives or
grows; they traced the mystery up to godhood; they found it reflected in
every object of reception and transit--in the temple, and house, and
vase, and moon-like horns; they saw it in the woodland path, winding
away in darkness among the trees; it lurked in seeds and nuts: man could
crush the grape and burn the flower, but he could _not_ solve the
inscrutable mystery of generation and life; and so he hallowed it. Hail
to thee, thou, its fairest earthly form, O Rose of sunlight and luxury
and love!

In a 'Floral Dictionary' at hand, I find the rose means, 'genteel,
pretty.' In another, twenty-four very different interpretations are
ascribed to as many varieties of this flower. It is almost needless to
say that the modern 'Language of Flowers' is, for the greater part,
merely the arbitrary invention of writers entirely ignorant of the
signification anciently attached to natural objects. The primary meaning
of the rose is _love_; and it is a rose-garland, and not a tulip, which
should stand for a 'declaration of passion,' and, at the same time, for
a pledge of secrecy. Many of these modern fancies are, however, very
beautiful; as, for instance, in that German lyric in which the Angel of
the Flowers confers a fresh grace on the rose by veiling it in moss:

'And, robed in Nature's simplest weed,
Could there a flower that rose exceed?'

But our task is to investigate those antique meanings of flowers, that
secret language of life and love consecrated to them for thousands of
years, and now buried under forgotten lays, legends, and strange relics
of art.

MACCARONI AND CANVAS.

IX.

ROMAN FIRESIDES.

It was a warm day in October when Caper engaged rooms in the Babuino;
the sun shone cheerfully, and he took no heed of the cold weather to
come: in fact he entertained the popular idea that the land half-way
between the tropics and paradise, called Italy, stood i