Nor were these earth-born castles bare, Nor lacked they many a banner fair; For, from their shivered brows displayed, Far o'er the unfathomable glade, All twinkling with the dew-drop's sheen, The briar-rose fell in streamers green, And creeping shrubs, of thousand dyes, Waved in the west wind's summer sighs.

High overarched the bloomy woodbine hung, The gaudy goldfinch from the maple sung; The little warbling minstrel of the shade To the gay morn her due devotion paid Next, the soft linnet echoing to the thrush With carols filled the smelling briar-bush; While Philomel attuned her artless throat, And from the hawthorn breathed a trilling note.

Still can we trace in fancy the sweet-briar hedge and the border of pinks which she planted by the trim canal; and a bowshot from the great school can lose all knowledge of the present in the crowding memories which the Duelling Green and the Bowling Alley, trodden by the men and women of a past generation, awaken in the mind.

The Sweet briar R rubiginosa, Gul nusreen usturoon, grows to a large size, and blossoms freely in India, but is apt to become straggling, although, if carefully clipped, it may be raised as a hedge the same as in England, it is so universally a favorite as to need no description.

Again, if a girl found a branch of a briar-thorn which had bent over and grown into the ground so as to form a loop, she would creep through the loop thrice late in the evening in the devil's name, then cut the briar and put it under her pillow, all without speaking a word.