A certain Duke of Tuscany, the first possessor of a plant of
this tribe, wished to preserve it as an unique, and forbade his gardener
to give away a single sprig of it. But the gardener was a more faithful
lover than servant and was more willing to please a young mistress than
an old master. He presented the young girl with a branch of jessamine on
her birth-day. She planted it in the ground; it took root, and grew and
blossomed. She multiplied the plant by cuttings, and by the sale of
these realized a little fortune, which her lover received as her
marriage dowry.
In England the bride wears a coronet of intermingled orange blossom and
jessamine. Orange flowers indicate chastity, and the jessamine, elegance
and grace.
THE ROSE.
For here the rose expands
Her paradise of leaves.
_Southey._
The ROSE, (_Rosa_) the Queen of Flowers, was given by Cupid to
Harpocrates, the God of Silence, as a bribe, to prevent him from
betraying the amours of Venus. A rose suspended from the ceiling
intimates that all is strictly confidential that passes under it. Hence
the phrase--_under the Rose_[075].
The rose was raised by Flora from the remains of a favorite nymph. Venus
and the Graces assisted in the transformation of the nymph into a
flower. Bacchus supplied streams of nectar to its root, and Vertumnus
showered his choicest perfumes on its head.
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