The saffron tea-rose is an exotic of exotics, and the daintiest of fine ladies bears it in her jewelled fingers to the opera, and there imbues it with the languid ecstasy of an Italian melody. The aroma, floating round those creamy buds, vibrates to the impassioned agony of artistic luxury--to the pleasurable pain that dies away in rippling undulations of the tones. But the red rose is dyed deep with simpler passion. War notes are hers, but not trumpet tongued, as they pour from out the fiery cactus. No; it is as if a woman's heart thrilled through the red rose to sadden the reveille for country and for God!--an irrepressible undertone of mourning surging over the anguish that must surely come. Love songs belong, too, to the damask rose, but love still set to martial chords, wrung, as it were, from heroes' wives, in a rapture of patriotic sacrifice. The white roses are St. Cecilia's, and swell to organ strains; all but that whitest rose, so wan and fragile, which haunts old shady gardens, and never seems to have been there when all things were in their prime, but to have blossomed out of the surrounding decay and fading loveliness. From its bowed head falls drearily upon the ear a low lament over the departed life it would commemorate. With roses comes the honeysuckle--the real New England one--brimful of nutmeg; and the sweetbriar, piquant with a _L'Allegro_ strain left by Milton. Then the laburnum, which, dripping gold, drips honey likewise, and the locust clusters, and the wistaria, dropping lusciousness. These are all joy-bells evidently, outbursts of the bliss of nature, but the garb of the wistaria is more sober than her brilliant sisters, whose attire is bright and shining. There are flowers that seem set to sacred music. Lilies, white and sweet, which, from the Lily of the Annunciation to the lily of the valley, are hallowed by every reverent fancy; for 'In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea.' And the little white verbena, which recalls, in some mystic way, the old Puritan tune, 'Naomi,' whose words of calm submission are so closely interwoven with one's earliest religious faith. But in contrast to this meek northern saint of a flower, there is a southern flush of oleander bloom, that pours out hymns of mystical devotion, overflowing with the exuberant vitality, glowing with the intense fervor, of the Tropics. There are flowers, also, the burden of whose odorous airs is sensibly of this world only, earthy, sensuous. Such are the cape jessamine and the narcissus, alike glistening in satin raiment, and alike distilling aromatic essence. Something akin to the waltzes of Strauss, one might fancy, is the music suited to their mood.