1869.] THE ROSE. 99 



or two, a shuffling of impatient shoes, as when too much preliminary- 

 fiddling goes on before the play. And here, positively, in the very 

 crisis and nick of time, my doubt is dissolved, the knot is cut s-r/gu^w 

 ^^'//li, upon the razor- edge of good-luck, and by an incident which 

 sounds like a miracle. The Rose makes ansioer for itself. Yes, biting 

 my quill, and beginning to think that the more I bite the nearer I draw 

 to the stupidity of the bird which grew it, I hear an intermittent tap- 

 ping on the panes of a window near. I am not startled, because this 

 identical tapping has been going on for a good many years, whenever 

 winds are high ; but as I look up and see the cause, it seems to bring 

 new sounds to my ears — a spirit raps distinctly on the glass, " Begin 

 wlili us, the 



CLIMBING EOSES." 



I obey at once the legate of my Queen. I lose no time in stating that 

 the best Climbing Rose with which I am acquainted is Gloire de Dijon, 

 commonly classed with the Tea-scented China Roses, but more closely 

 resembling the Noisette family in its robust growth and hardy consti- 

 tution. Planted against a wall having a southern or eastern aspect, it 

 grows, when once fairly established, with a wonderful luxuriance. I 

 have just measured a lateral on one of my trees, and of the last 

 year's growth, and found it to be 19 feet in length, and the bole of 

 another at the base to be nearly 10 inches in circumference. The 

 latter grows on the chancel-wall of my church, and has had two hundred 

 flowers upon it in full and simultaneous bloom ; nor will the reader 

 desire to arraign me for superstitious practices before a judicial com- 

 mittee when he hears that to this Rose I make daily obeisance, because 

 — I only duck to preserve my eyesight. The two trees alluded to are 

 on their own roots, but the Rose thrives stoutly on the Briar and the 

 Manetti, budded and grafted, wherever Roses grow. Its flowers are 

 the earliest and latest ; it has symmetry, size, endurance, colour (five 

 tints are given to it in the Rose-catalogue, buff, yellow, orange, fawn, 

 salmon, and it has them all), and perfume. It is what cricketers call 

 an "all-rounder," good in every point for wall, arcade, pillar, standard, 

 dwarf — en masse, or as a single tree. It is easy to cultivate, out of 

 doors and in. It forces admirably, and you may have it, almost in its 

 summer beauty, w^hen Christmas snows are on the ground. With 

 half-a-dozen pots of it, carefully treated, and half-a-dozen trees in your 

 garden, you may enjoy it all the year round ; and if ever, for some 

 heinous crime, I were miserably sentenced, for the rest of my life, to 

 possess but a single Rose-tree, I should desire to be supplied, on leav- 

 ing the dock, with a strong plant of Gloire de Dijon. 



As to treatment, although this Rose, like some thoroughbred horse, 



