1869.] THE ROSE. • 389 



ever made law more unalterable than this, The largest Roses must he 

 Xolaced at the hack, the smallest in the front, and the intermediate in 

 the middle of your hoxes. They become by this arrangement so gra- 

 dually beautifully less that the disparity of size is imperceptible. 

 Transgress this rule, and the result will be disastrous, ludicrous, as 

 when some huge London carriage-horse is put in harness with the 

 paternal cob, or as when some small but ambitious dancer runs round 

 and round the tallest girl at the ball in the gyrations of the mazy 

 waltz. So Triomphe de Rennes in your front row is a beautiful yellow 

 Rose. Placed in juxtaposition to Marechal Niel, its name becomes a 

 cruel joke -, your little gem is lost beside the Koh-i-noor, and your 

 bright star pales before the rising sun its ineffectual fire. 



You will have another advantage in commencing with your finest 

 flowers, because of these you will have (or ought to have) the larger 

 stock, and will thus be able to lay at the same time and in the same 

 order the foundation of your different collections, using the same 

 corner-stone in each (begin always with some glorious Rose, which 

 must attract the judicial eye, and make an impression upon the judicial 

 heart), and assimilating the arrangement, as long as you possess the 

 material. Much labour, head work and leg work, is saved by this plan 

 of simultaneous structure. 



The amateur must not exhibit these larger Roses when they have 

 lost their freshness of colour, or when the petals, opening at the 

 centre, reveal the yellow " eye." He must not place a Rose in his 

 box because it has heen superlatively beautiful. In the eyes of her 

 husband, the wife a matron should be lovely as the wife a bride ; 

 but the world never saw her in her Honiton veil, and respectfully 

 votes her a trifle passee. At the same time, let not the exhibitor 

 be over-timid, nor discard a Rose which has reached the summit of 

 perfection, and may descend he knows not when, but let him bravely 

 and hopefully set it among its peers. If it suffers from the journey, 

 it must be replaced, of course, from the box of spare bloom.s, which 

 every exhibitor takes with him ; but if it holds its own, let it remain, 

 though you are still anxious concerning it. If it is really a Rose of 

 superior merit, nothing can now happen which will prevent a righteous 

 Rosarian, such as every judge ought to be, from recognising its claims. 

 I once saw, and the recollection makes me shudder still, a senseless 

 censor thrust the end of a huge finger into the heart of a magnificent 

 Due de Rohan, in his anxiety to assure us, his coadjutors, that the 

 Rose was too fully blown. Oh how I wished that the Due, to whom 

 ■we voted by a majority the highest marks, had been armed for the 

 moment with a ferret's teeth ! 



The arrangement of Roses, with regard to their colour, has not 



