pleasing effect in other places away from the Rosariumin those plantation-walks, for example, which are attached to many of our country residences; and these Climbing Roses might be planted by landlords of generosity and taste, so as to make unsightly buildings ornamental, and to render many a plain cottage more cheerful and homelike. I should like to see them more frequently at our railway stations-and why not upon our railway bridges and embankments? How striking and beautiful thereon would be such a torrent of white Roses as I have seen at Sawbridgeworth, covering the bank which slopes to the road from the house of the great Rose king! Coming down from the Climbers to the

TALL STANDARDS,

I take leave to say that, although where windows and walls are otherwise inaccessible, a long spider-broom in the hands of an efficient housemaid deserves the admiration with which we watched it in our youth, few persons would think of cutting it in twain, and of setting the upper half in a garden of Roses. Yet have I seen objects suggestive of such an operation in some of those remarkably tall standards which are still extant, but which, were I Czar and

Autocrat of all the Roses, would soon find themselves, like other foolish Poles, in exile. Their appearance is unhappy; there is no congruity between stock and scion, no union between horse and rider—an exposition, on the contrary, of mutual discomfort, as though the monkey were to mount the giraffe. The proprietors, it would seem, have been misled by an impression that the vigour of the Brier would be imparted to the Rose, whereas the superabundance of sap has been fatal. Food, continuous and compulsory, which it could not assimilate or digest, has induced a sickly surfeit; and the wretched Rose is stupefied, and looks so, with a determination of blood to the head. Granting a success, which I have never seen but once (in a glorious tree of the old Hybrid China Fulgens), the process of fruition would be laborious. Only from a balloon, a balcony, a bedroom window, could we supervise and fully appreciate such sublimities! Are we then to discard entirely those standard trees described to us in the catalogue as "extra tall"? Is Briareus the giant to be again buried beneath Mount Etna-i. e., the rubbish-heap? Certainly not. He may do us good service, kindly treated, and be made to look most imposing in our gardens holding a fair bouquet of Roses in each of his hundred

hands. I mean that the vigorous Briers, from 6 to 8 feet

in height, may be converted into

WEEPING ROSE-TREES,

which, properly trained, are very beautiful.

Buds of the

Ayrshire and Evergreen Roses, of Amadis and Gracilis, Boursaults, or of Blairii 2, Hybrid China, should be inserted, in three or four laterals, at the top of such standards as have been selected for their health as well as their height. Closely pruned the following spring, they may be transplanted from the nursery, or from the private buddingground, in the autumn, and the removal must be effected with every possible care and attention. I would advise that these tall specimens be moved somewhat earlier than the usual time for transplanting, so that, when firmly secured in their place, and freely watered, they may be induced to make roots, and gain some hold of the ground before the winter begins. A strong iron stake, set side by side with the stem, and surrounding it just below the junction of the buds with a semi-globular framework, the whole apparatus resembling a parasol with a quadruple allowance of stick, will be the best support for the tree (fixed deeply in the ground, of course, as directed for the

Pillar Roses), and will enable the amateur to dispose the branches at regular intervals, so that they will finally form a fair dome of Roses-such a floral fountain as may have played in the fancy of our Laureate, when he wrote

"The white Rose weeps, she is late."

And now we have passed through the Rose-clad wallsthrough the Rose-wreathed colonnades and courts of the outer palace-into the anteroom of that presence-chamber where we shall see, in brilliant assemblage, the beauty and the chivalry of the Queen of Flowers. We will pause a while that we may arrange simultaneously our nerves and our court costume, the former troubled by a horrible suspicion that every eye is gazing derisively upon our blacksilk legs; and then let us enter, to make, if that abominable sword permit, our loyal and devout obeisance.

L

CHAPTER X.

GARDEN ROSES.

SOON after the publication of my last chapter,* I received from a furio-comic amateur the following epistle :

SIR,-I wish to be informed what the Two in Whist you mean by leaving me on the 1st of April, ult., in a ridiculous costume and a crowded anteroom, quietly proposing to keep me there for a month. My legs, sir, cannot be included among "varieties suitable for exhibition." They have, on the contrary, been described too truly by a sarcastic street-boy as "bad uns to stop a pig in a gate," and you might at least have clothed them in the black velvet trousers recently and reasonably introduced. Moreover, I hate anterooms. They remind me of disagreeable epochs—of waiting in custom-houses for luggage, which was not, perhaps, quite what moral luggage should be; of dreary dining-rooms belonging to dentists, where, surveying with nervous rapidity the photographic album, and wondering over the portrait of Mrs Dentist, how that pretty face could have wed with forceps, lancet, and file, I have heard kicks and groans from the "drawing-room above," ""oh-ohs" from the chair which I was about to fill. They recall to memory rooms scholastic, in which I listened for the approach of lictor and fasces, and from which, though mounted and with my back turned to the enemy, I had no power to flee. They bring to recollection rooms collegiate, sombre, walled with books, where with other

*In the Gardener.