54 THE GARDENER. [Feb. 



work as one who counts sucli service its own reward and honour. If 

 before the Fall, before the earth brought forth Brier or Thorn, man 

 was put into a garden to dress it and to keep it, with his will and with 

 his might must he labour now in that plot of ground where he fain 

 would realise his fond idea of Eden. He must work hard, but only as 

 one who copies some great masterpiece — not as one who designs, but 

 restores. He must keep order, but only as replacing an arrangement 

 which he has himself disturbed. Thus and thus only he may hope to 

 make himself a garden 



*' "Where order in variety we see, 

 And where, though all things difTer, all agree." 



Were it my privilege to lay out an extensive Rose-garden, I should 

 desire a piece of broken natural ground, surrounded on all sides but 

 the south with sloping banks, on which evergreens above should 

 screen and beautify by contrast the Roses blooming beneath ; and in 

 the centre I should have, at irregular intervals, mounds high enough 

 to obstruct the view even of Arba, great among the Anakims, which 

 would enable me to surj)rise, to vary, and to conceal, according to the 

 golden rule which I have before quoted. On the level from which 

 these mounds arose would be the beds and single specimens ; at the 

 corners my bowers and nooks. All the interior space not occupied by 

 Roses should be turf — "nothing," writes Lord Bacon, "is more 

 pleasant to the eye than green grass kept finely shorn" — and this 

 always broad enough for the easy operations of the mowing-machine, 

 and for the trailing garments (they don't trail now, but who can tell 

 what • La Mode ' may ordain next summer ?) of those bright visitors, 

 the only beings upon earth more beautiful than the Rose itself. And 

 who can be jealous? Who can grudge them the universal homage 

 which even in the queenly presence they always claim and win*? 

 More than once, I must confess, has a remonstrance risen to my 

 lips which I have not dared to utter. I remember sitting on 

 a summer's eve contemplating my Roses in the soft light of the 

 setting sun, and in the society of a sentimental friend, more than 

 ever sentimental because a daughter of the gods, divinely fair, 

 had just left us for the house. We sat still and pensive, until 

 at last I broke a long silence with the involuntary exclamation, 

 *' Aren't they lovely 1 " " Lovely ! " he replied ; " I hate 'em. She 

 called that Due de Rohan a darling, and that Senna Tea Vaisse, 

 or whatever his name is " (he knew it as well as I did), " a darling. I 

 tell you what, old fellow, if either of these worthies could appear in 

 the flesh, there is nothing in the world I should like so much as a 

 tete-a-tete with him in a 24 -foot ring. I flatter myself that I 



