The Festival of the Rose is still kept up in many villages of France and Switzerland.  On a certain day of every year the young unmarried women assemble and undergo a solemn trial before competent judges, the most virtuous and industrious girl obtains a crown of roses.  In the valley of Engandine, in Switzerland, a man accused of a crime but proved to be not guilty, is publicly presented by a young maiden with a white rose called the Rose of Innocence.

Of the truly elegant Moss Rose I need say nothing myself; it has been so amply honored by far happier pens than mine.  Here is a very ingenious and graceful story of its origin.  The lines are from the German.

THE MOSS ROSE

    The Angel of the Flowers one day,
    Beneath a rose tree sleeping lay,
    The spirit to whom charge is given
    To bathe young buds in dews of heaven,
    Awaking from his light repose
    The Angel whispered to the Rose
    “O fondest object of my care
    Still fairest found where all is fair,
    For the sweet shade thou givest to me
    Ask what thou wilt ’tis granted thee”
    “Then” said the Rose, “with deepened glow
    On me another grace bestow.” 
    The spirit paused in silent thought
    What grace was there the flower had not? 
    ’Twas but a moment—­o’er the rose
    A veil of moss the Angel throws,
    And robed in Nature’s simple weed,
    Could there a flower that rose exceed?

Madame de Genlis tells us that during her first visit to England she saw a moss-rose for the first time in her life, and that when she took it back to Paris it gave great delight to her fellow-citizens, who said it was the first that had ever been seen in that city.  Madame de Latour says that Madame de Genlis was mistaken, for the moss-rose came originally from Provence and had been known to the French for ages.

The French are said to have cultivated the Rose with extraordinary care and success.  It was the favorite flower of the Empress Josephine, who caused her own name to be traced in the parterres at Malmaison with a plantation of the rarest roses.  In the royal rosary at Versailles there are standards eighteen feet high grafted with twenty different varieties of the rose.

With the Romans it was no metaphor but an allusion to a literal fact when they talked of sleeping upon beds of roses.  Cicero in his third oration against Verres, when charging the proconsul with luxurious habits, stated that he had made the tour of Sicily seated upon roses.  And Seneca says, of course jestingly, that a Sybarite of the name of Smyrndiride was unable to sleep if one of the rose-petals on his bed happened to be curled!  At a feast which Cleopatra gave to Marc Antony the floor of the hall was covered with fresh roses to the depth of eighteen inches.  At a fete given by Nero at Baiae the sum of four millions of sesterces or about 20,000_l_. was incurred for roses.  The Natives of India are fond of the rose, and are lavish in their expenditure at great festivals, but I suppose that no millionaire amongst them ever spent such an amount of money as this upon flowers alone.[076]