fell prone from our rocking-horse (a nuptial grey), and

broke her bridal nose.

The Banksian Rose is indeed

"A miniature of loveliness, all grace

Summed up and closed in little;"

and both the Yellow and White varieties—the latter having a sweet perfume, as though it had just returned from a visit to the Violet-should be in every collection of mural Roses. The plants should be on their own roots, and those roots should be well protected during the winter months. It cannot be warranted perfectly hardy, but with careful mulching there is scarcely one frost in a lifetime which will kill it. It may be injured even to the ground, but it will come up again with wondrous rapidity. A tree of mine, which half covered my house, perished in 1860-61, but it was not sufficiently guarded, because I thought it safe; and "'Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all."

Under favourable circumstances, the growth of this Rose is most luxuriant. A French writer on Roses tells us of a tree at Toulon which covered a wall 75 feet in breadth and 15 to 18 in height, and which had fifty thousand flowers in simultaneous bloom; and specimens may be seen in our own gardens and conservatories which repress any unbe

lief. The trees should be pruned when they have flowered in summer, so that a fresh growth of laterals may be well ripened before winter, and bloom in the ensuing spring.

Rather more than twenty years ago, Mr Fortune sent over a batch of Climbing Roses from China, and from one of them, named Fortune's Yellow, great expectations rose. It was described by a Rosarian at Seven Oaks as being nearly as rampant as the old Ayrshire, quite hardy, covered from the middle of May with large loose flowers of every shade-between a rich reddish buff and a full coppery pink-and rambling over a low wall, covering it on both sides, about 20 feet wide and 5 feet high." Mr Fortune himself described it as most striking in its own country, with flowers "yellowish salmon, and bronze-like;" but it did not succeed in my garden, and as I find it in only one of the catalogues, I fear it has all but succumbed to our ungenial climate.

Although the Boursault Rose is called, from its habitat, Rosa Alpina, it certainly has not the agility in climbing which entitles the Roses previously discussed to membership in the Alpine Club. The old crimson Amadis is very beautiful when the evening sun is low, and the soft light rests upon its glowing flowers, and the blush variety is large

and lovely (albeit the floral cottager was right who told me that he "considered them Roses flothery"); but Ichabod is soon written on flower and leaf, and the habit of growth is anything but graceful, "Gracilis" itself forming no exception. They may be trained both to climb and droop, but they have long ceased to perform in my Rosarium either of these evolutions. There are better Roses.

Nor am I acquainted, so numerous are the candidates having stronger claims, with any garden which has space to spare for the Multiflora, or for the Hybrid Climbing Roses.

They are disappearing from the lists (as fair ladies do when no combatant wears their glove in his helmet); and I sigh to count the happy, happy years which are gone since I laid "the Garland," as an Immortelle, upon the tomb of "Madame D'Arblay."

K

CHAPTER IX.

SELECTION(continued.)

DESCENDING now from roseate heights, and ere we reach the perfumed plains below, we must halt to gaze upon our

PILLAR ROSES,

some rising singly here and there, like the proud standards of victorious troops; some meeting in graceful conjunction, saluting each other like our forefathers and foremothers in the stately minuet-bowing themselves, like tall and supple cavaliers, into arches of courtesy, with keystones of cocked hats. In both phases these Pillar Roses are beautiful additions to the Rosarium, enabling us, like the Rose-mounds previously commended, to enliven, with a pleasing diversity, that level which is described as dead. But with reference to the first, I must offer to amateurs a respectful cautionthat to grow single specimens in isolated positions, where

they will invite, and ought to satisfy, special criticism— knowledge of habit, and experience in pruning, will be indispensable. Melancholy results must inevitably ensue from ignorance or inattention; and I have shuddered to see examples of both in long lanky trees, without any lateral shoots, flowerless and leafless for three-fourths of their height, reminding one of those shorn disgusting poodles, profanely termed by their proprietors "lions," as they stand upon their execrable hind legs to beg. But not upon them—not upon the helpless object-but on the barbarous owner, we must expend our noble rage; upon those who have brought innocent loveliness to the whipping-post, or rather the pillory, and compelled her to look the words which St Simeon Stylites moaned—

"Patient on this tall pillar, I have borne

Rain, wind, frost, heat, hail, damp, and sleet, and snow.”

The best plan of growing these Roses, which a long experience has taught me, is this: To prepare and enrich your soil as I have advised in Chapters VI. and VII., and then to fix firmly therein the pillar which is to support the trees. Of what material is this pillar to be?-wood or iron? The former commends itself to the eye (and the pocket) at once; and I well remember the satisfaction with