been here a fortnight afore I swopped it for a pond!" He had, as a further explanation informed me, and after an agreement with a neighbouring farmer, removed with pick and barrow his sandy stratum to the depth of 3 feet, wheeled it to the banks of an old pond, or rather to the margin of a cavity where a pond once was, but which had been gradually filled up with leaves and silt; and this rich productive mould he had brought home, a distance of 200 yards, replacing it with the gravel, and levelling as per contract. Some other neighbour had given him a cartload of clay, and the children had "scratted together a nicst bit o' muck, and he meant stirring up them cottagers at next show with Roses and kidneys too."

It occurred to me, as I rode home reflecting, that there was a striking similarity in this case, as in many others, between the gardener and his ground; for Will had been at one time a drinking, poaching, quarrelsome “shack,” and was now a good husband, a good father, and, I believe, a good Christian;—the gravel had been converted into loam. And is there not much resemblance between ourselves and our soils the soil without, and that soil within which the Psalmist calls "the ground of the heart"? No two characters, and no two gardens, exactly alike, but all with the

same natural propensity to send up wild oats and weeds, and to send their tap-roots downwards; all requiring continuous culture, training, and watchful care; all dependent, when man has done his best, upon the sunshine and rains of heaven. "Soils," writes Loudon, "not kept friable by cultivation, soon become hardened;" and so do hearts. But from ourselves, as from our soils, we may eject the evil, introducing the good in its place; we may grow Roses instead of weeds, if we will."Upon the same man," writes Richter, who was a florist as well as a philosopher, and seldom appeared in the streets of Bayreuth without a flower in his coat, "as upon a vine-planted mount, there grow more kinds of wine than one: on the south side something little worse than nectar, on the north side something little better than vinegar." But we may level the hill by humbling our pride, and so lay open the whole vineyard before the summer sun.

I pass now to the consideration of a subject which I believe to be the most important of all to those who desire to grow Roses in perfection.

CHAPTER VI.

MANURES.

I OPENED noiselessly the other morning, that I might enjoy a father's gladness, the door of a room in which my little boy, "six off," was at his play. He was evidently entertaining an illustrious visitor, a beloved and honoured guest. The table, surrounded by every available chair, with a firescreen for the front-door, and a music-stool, inverted atop to represent the main stack of chimneys, was transformed into a palace of art. The banquet had just commenced, and the courteous host was recommending to his distinguished guest (a very large and handsome black retriever, by name

Colonel") the viands before him. These viands, upon a cursory glance through the chair-legs, did not strike me as of an appetising or digestible character-the two pièces de résistance consisting of a leg-rest and a small coal-scuttle, and the side dishes being specimens of the first Atlantic

Telegraph Cable, presented to me by Sir Charles Bright, with a selection of exploded cartridges, sea-shells, ninepins, and keys. In the vivid imagination of childhood, notwithstanding, they represented all the luxuries dearest to the palate of youth; and if the Colonel, who, by the by, was in full uniform, made from the supplement of the Times newspaper, and was decoré with the Order of the String and Penwiper, had partaken of a tithe of the delicacies pressed on him, and according to the order in which they were served, there must have been inevitably speedy promotion in his regiment. The entertainment commenced with cheese, passed on to hasty-pudding and beer, which was followed in rapid succession by peaches, beef, roley-poley, hare, more hasty-pudding, honey, apricots, boiled rabbits, &c. "And, now, Colonel, dear," were the last words I heard, "you shall have some custard and pine-apple, and then we'll smoke a cigar." "'*

* I cannot resist an impulse to record another small incident which occurred to "Colonel" soon after the publication of this book. Late one winter's night, Joe, my footman, heard him growling angrily outside the stable-yard, and found him standing over the prostrate form of a man, or rather beast, so drunk that he was muttering responses to the dog, evidently under the impression that he was being severely reprimanded by some indignant person in authority. "Well, sir" (Joe heard him plead), “if I did say so, I'm sure I didn't mean it!"

In like manner does the wee golden-haired lassie delight to do homage to the queen of her little world, her doll, watching her tenderly, and singing a lullaby which, regarding the condition of those two immense blue eyes, appears to be quite hopeless; then decking her with every bit of finery which she can beg from mammy or nurse, and waiting upon her with a fond untiring service.

And even so did I, in the childhood of that life which is always young-do not our hearts foreknow, my brothers, the happy truth, which old men certify, that the love of flowers is of those few earthly pleasures which age cannot wither? -even so did I, in

"My sallet days,

When I was green in judgment,"

essay, with an enthusiastic though ofttimes mistaken zeal, to propitiate and to serve the Rose. And specially, as with my little boy and his large idol, in the matter of food. I tried to please her with a great diversity of diet. I made anxious experiment of a multiplicity of manures—organic and inorganic, animal and vegetable, cheap and costly, home and foreign. I laboured to discover her favourite dish as earnestly as the alchymist to realise the Philosopher's Stone; but I differed from the alchymist, the