THE 



GARDENER. 



AUGUST 1869. 



THE ROSE. 



{Continued from page 298.) 

 CHAPTER XIII. — ROSES FOR EXHIBITION. 



S lie wlio can ride exchanges his pony for a cob, and his cob 

 for a hunter, and, having achieved pads and brushes, where 

 hounds are slow, fences are easy, and rivals few, longs 

 for a gallop at racing speed over the pastures and the 



" Oxers " of High Leicestershire, for a run with Tailby or the Quorn 

 — as every man with a hobby (I never met a man without one) 

 is desirous to ride abroad, and witch the world with noble horse- 

 manship, — so the Rosarian, enlarging his possessions and improving 

 his skill, has yearnings, which no mother, nor sisters, nor people 

 coming to call, can satisfy, for sympathy, for knowledge, for re- 

 nown. He is tired of charging at the quintain, which he never fails 

 to hit, in the silent courtyard of his home : he will break a lance for 

 his ladye in the crowded lists. And who loves maiden so fair as his ? 

 What mean these braggart knights, his neighbours, by praising their 

 Rosas, so pale, so puny, in comparison 1 Their voices to his ear are 

 harsh, irritating ; they are as disagreeable as the crowings of contigu- 

 ous cocks to the ears df the game bantam ; and he feels it to be his 

 solemn duty to roll those knights in the dust. 



I offer my services as his esquire, and my advice as a veteran how 

 to invert and pulverise his foes. By foes I mean those miserable 

 knights who presume to grow and to show Roses without a careful 

 study of these chapters. Not thinking exactly as we do, they are of 

 course heretical and contumacious. They must be unhorsed. Then, 



z 



