as a garden of Roses. You may lay the foundation for a £5 note; and then, by budding and by striking cuttings from your own trees, and by an annual selection of a few additional and valuable varieties, may in two or three seasons possess a beautiful Rosarium.

I will now endeavour to tell, practically and minutely, how this may be done.

CHAPTER IV.

POSITION.

WHERE, is now our question, shall the Rosary be? In what part of our garden shall we find the best situation, the most worthy site for a royal throne? Some, indeed, have treated our Queen more as a menial than as a monarch; they have sent her Majesty by lobbies and back-stairs into dismal chambers which look down on bottle-racks, and to attics where, through clattering casement, the wintry winds blow chill. And this when they should have uncovered their drawing-room damask, and thoroughly aired their best bed.

Some, having heard that a free circulation of air and abundance of sunshine are essential elements of success, select a spot which would be excellent for a windmill, observatory, beacon, or Martello tower; and there the poor Rose-trees stand, or, more accurately speaking, wobble,

with their leaves, like King Lear's silver locks, rudely blown and drenched by the "to-and-fro contending wind and rain." I have seen a garden of Roses-I mean a collection of Roseless-trees-in front of a "noble mansion, proudly placed upon a commanding eminence," where, if you called upon a gusty day, the wind blew the powder from the footman's hair as soon as he had opened the front door, and other doors within volleyed and thundered a feu de joie in honour of the coming guest.

Others, who had been told that the Rose loves shelter, peace, repose, have found "such a dear snug little spot," not only surrounded by dense evergreen shrubs, but overshadowed by giant trees. Rest is there, assuredly-rest for the Rose, when its harassed life is past, when it has nothing more for disease to prey upon, no buds for the caterpillar, no foliage for the aphis-the rest of a mausoleum! I was taken not long ago to a cemetery of this description, which had been recently laid out; and there was such a confident expectation of praise in the pretty face of the lady who took me, that I was sorely puzzled how to express my feelings. I wished to be kind, I wished to be truthful; and the result was some such a dubious compliment as the sultan paid to the French pianist. The French

man, you may remember, was a muscular artist, more remarkable for power than pathos; and he went at the instrument, and shook and worried it as a terrier goes in at rats. His exertions were sudorific; and when he finished the struggle, with beads on his brow, the sultan told him, "that although he had heard the most renowned performers of the age, he had never met one who-perspired so freely!" Nor could I, with my heart as full of charity's milk as a Cheshire dairy of the cow's, think of any higher praise of the plot before me than that it was an admirable place for ferns; and therefore, when my commentary was received with an expressive smile of genteel disgust, as though I had suggested that the allotment in question was the site of all others for a jail, or had said, as Carlyle said of the Royal Garden at Potsdam, that "it was one of the finest Fog-preserves in Europe," then, without further prevarications, I told the truth. And the truth is, that this boundless contiguity of shade is fatal, and every overhanging tree is fatal as an upas-tree, to the Rose. As Ireland has been said to be too near a great country ever to achieve greatness for itself (I do not myself attribute its humidity or its indolence, its famines or its Fenianism, to the vicinity of England); so the Rose, in close proximity to a forest

tree, can never hope to thrive. In a twofold sense it takes umbrage; robbed above and robbed below, robbed by branches of sunshine and by roots of soil, it sickens, droops, and dies. A Rose under trees can no more flourish than a deer can get a good "head" who never leaves the forest for the moor.

These regicides were none the less correctly told both those who kill by suffocation, and those who starve our Queen to death-that the Rose must have a free circulation of air, and likewise repose and rest. The directions may seem to be incongruous, but they can be, and must be, followed. The Rosarium must be both exposed and sheltered; a place both of sunshine and of shade. The centre must be clear and open, around it the protecting screen. It must be a fold wherein the sun shines warmly on the sheep, and the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb; a haven in which the soft breeze flutters the sail, but over which the tempest roars, and against whose piers the billow hurls itself in vain.

And this may, I think, be taken consequently as a golden rule in the formation of a Rose-garden: so arrange it that a large proportion of your trees may have the sunshine on them from its rise to the meridian, and after that time be in