protect the Rose; and there I have ever seen her smiling upon Love, however mean its offering, and rewarding its untiring service. For the flirt, for the faint-hearted, for the coxcomb, who thinks that upon his first sentimental sigh she will rush into his arms and weep, she has nothing but sublime disdain. Of this, and before I speak upon Soil, let me submit an illustration. Not many summers since, three individuals, of whom I was one, were conversing in a country home. One of my companions was about to succeed the other as tenant of the house in which we were met, and was making anxious inquiry about the garden in general, and concerning Roses in particular. "Oh!" said our host, "the place is much too exposed for Roses. No man in the world is fonder of them than I am, and I have tried all means, and spared no expense; but it is simply hopeless." "Must have Roses," was the quiet commentary of the new-comer; and two years afterwards I met him at the local flower-show, the winner of a first prize for twelve. "My predecessor," he said, "was no more the enthusiast which he professed to be about Roses, than that Quaker was an enthusiastic almsgiver who had felt so much for his afflicted friend but had not felt in his pocket. The pleasure-grounds, it is true, are too bleak for prize blooms, but in the large, half-cultivated kitchen-garden, I found the most delightful corner, with an eastern aspect; put in one hundred Briers; budded them last summer; manured them abundantly this; and am now, between ourselves, and sub rosâ, in such a bumptious condition, that you'd think I'd made the Roses myself." There is, alas! one locality, beneath that dark canopy of smoke which hangs over and around our large cities and manufacturing towns, wherein it is not possible to grow the Rose in its glory; and many a time as I have stood in the pure air and sunshine among my own beautiful flowers, I have felt a most true and sorrowful sympathy for those who, loving the Rose as fondly as I do, are unable to realise its perfect beauty. Well, no man can have his earthly happiness just in the way he wills; but every man, as a rule, has his equal share, and these men, I doubt not, have other successes as solace and compensation. Nay, are not their Roses, which we, more favoured, should regard as disappointments, successes to them, great and gratifying? If Mr Shirley Hibberd, for example, whose "Rose Book" I commend to urban and oppidan amateurs, can grow good Roses within four miles of the General Post-Office-and I have seen the proofs of his skill and perseverance at one of the great London Rose-shows, to my high surprise and delectation-it is quite certain that he would be nulli secundus with the full advantage of situation and soil. Nor do I hesitate to say that the collection to which I refer, necessarily less perfect than those around it in colour and in size, seemed to me the most honourable of all. What can I offer, besides the hand of friendship and the praise of an old Rosarian, to these brave brethren of the Rose? I subjoin for them a list of those varieties which are, in my opinion, most likely to repay their anxious care. Let them be planted in the best place and in the best soil available, avoiding drip and roots. Let them be manured in the winter and mulched in the spring. In the summer months let them be well watered below and well syringed above two or three times a-week. Let grubs and aphides be removed, and sulphur, or soot, or soap-and-water, applied as soon as mildew shows itself. E LIST OF ROSES FOR SUBURBAN GARDENS. For Walls.-Gloire de Dijon, Solfaterre, the Ayrshire, Sempervirens, and Boursault Roses-the latter three where a large space is to be covered. Of Summer Roses.-The Common Moss, the Common Provence or Cabbage; La Ville de Bruxelles and Madame Hardy, Damasks; Boula de Nanteuil and Kean, Gallicas; Brennus and Blairii 2,* Hybrid Chinas ; Charles Lawson* and Paul Perras, Hybrid Bourbons. Of Autumnal Roses.-Auguste Mie, Baronne Prevost, Charles Lefebvre, Empereur de Maroc (on Manetti), Comte de Nanteuil, General Jacque minot, Jean Goujon, Jules Margottin, La Reine, La Ville de St Denis, Leopold I., Madame Boll, Madame Boutin, Madame Clemence Joigneaux, Madame Victor Verdier, Maréchal Vaillant, Marie Beauman, Madame Charles Wood, Marguerite de St Amand, Pierre Notting, Senateur Vaisse, Hybrid Perpetuals; Armosa, Queen, and Souvenir de la Malmaison, Bourbons; Aimée Vibert and Grandiflora, Noisettes; Mrs Bosanquet, China; and Climbing, Devoniensis, Gloire de Dijon,+ Sombreuil, and Souvenir d'un Ami, Teas. * Blairii 2 and Charles Lawson must not be too shortly pruned. the weakly wood, and leave 8 or 10 66 eyes" on the vigorous branches. Cut out I name this Rose again, because it should be planted not only against a wall, but in the garden. CHAPTER V. SOILS. "WHAT a constitution must that air and soil of Herefordshire give the Rose!" So wrote Dr Lindley, praising the beautiful blooms which Mr Cranston brought from the King's Acre, by Hereford city, to the first grand National Rose-show. And we aliens read with envy. Rivers, and the Pauls, and Lane, and Francis, gazed sorrowfully a while on the t in Hertfordshire; from Sussex, so it seemed to Messrs Wood and Mitchell, all success had fled; "So much for Buckingham," sighed Mr Turner from the Slough of his deep despair; in Wiltshire, even Keynes, the stout-hearted, looked ruefully for a moment on his fair garden as though it had been Salisbury Plain; in Essex, Mr Cant of Colchester was mute as one of its oysters; and as these great leaders of Queen Rosa's armies were seized with a brief despair, we privates and non-commissioned officers were not what we should have been with regard to knees, and felt a |