1869.] THE ROSE. 445 



garden, contentment, generosity, perseverance, hope. They will tell 

 him that the lessons of defeat will most certainly teach him to conquer, 

 if he will only learn them patiently, noting his failures, and making 

 every effort to overcome them. Fighting for the prize, he resembles 

 in one point, and one only I trust, the prize-fighter : when judgment, 

 temper, self-mastery are lost, the battle is lost also. They will tell 

 him not only how to win his laurels, but how to wear them gracefully ; 

 in prosperity, as well as in adversity, to preserve the equal mind. But 

 which will be his lot to-day ? The crisis approaches, and the stern 

 mandate of the peremptory police is already sounding in his ears, 

 " This tent must be cleared for the Judges^ 



It used to be said at our flower-shows, '' Oh, any one can judge the 

 Roses j" and when, few in quantity and feeble in quality, they formed 

 but a small item of the exhibition, they had, of course, no special 

 claims ; but this indifi'erence unhappily prevailed long after the Rose 

 had become a chief attraction in our summer shows, and even where 

 it was the only flower exhibited. At our great Rose-shows we have 

 succeeded in eliminating from the halls of justice incompetent judges ; 

 but elsewhere the Rosarian takes with his Roses a very anxious heart. 

 Only last year one of our most successful competitors, a Leicestershire 

 clergyman, who had just won two first-prizes at the Crystal Palace, took 

 some Roses equally good to a show at Burton-upon-Trent. Facile 

 princeps, he was not even commended ; and on remonstrating was 

 informed by one. of the judges that his Roses, to which precedence had 

 been given at a national contest, '•'"icere not the right sorts for exhibi- 

 tion'^ The fact is, that three varieties of censors are still appointed 

 over the Roses at our provincial shows. There is the man who loves 

 them, knows and grows them well — his judgments will be right. There 

 is the man who is a clever florist and grows Roses partially — his judg- 

 ments will generally be right, but if the collections are large or num- 

 erous, or nearly equal in merit, he will be perplexed to incapacity. 

 Thirdly, there is the man appointed to be judge of the Roses 

 because he once won a prize for Cucumbers, or because the mayor 

 knows his uncle. The latter is either, in his wise silence, quite use- 

 less, or, in his fool's loquacity, a dreadful bore — dangerous wherever 

 he has power. To the second I would say, 



" Cassio, I love thee, but never more be officer of mine " 

 until you know more about Roses, To the first I take off my hat, as 

 to '' a chief justice among chief justices," * and wish that he may ever 

 preside in court when I have a cause to plead. 



The arbiter at a Rose-show should be a man who not only lives 



* So Fuller designates our great Nottinghamshire judge, Markham. 



