> "It was a strange and beautiful peculiarity of the soil, that, after so many years of exclusive possession by the prison, and so long a time as it had taken the rank luxuriance of the prison-garden to die out of it, there was yet virtue enough left in the earth to produce a rose-bush of such exquisite fragrance and beauty, as we may vainly try to imagine.
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> Its delicate fragrance was the only sweet thing in that atmosphere, and its beautiful blush the only one in that sombre crowd of heavy brows and lack-lustre eyes. The rose-bush, by a strange and beautiful effect, was the one thing in the Puritanic town that seemed to have caught a glimmer of the rich, voluptuous beauty which had bloomed so luxuriantly a century before."
Here, the rosebush is given human characteristics:
* Fragrance is described as "sweet" - something a person might find pleasing.
* The rose's blush is described as "beautiful" - again, something a person might find appealing.
* The rosebush is said to have caught a "glimmer of the rich, voluptuous beauty" - a human understanding of beauty.
This personification is significant because it symbolizes hope and beauty in the midst of the harshness and repression of Puritan society. The rosebush stands out as a symbol of the human spirit's ability to find beauty and joy even in the most unforgiving circumstances.