248 THE GARDENER. [June 



Before we skim their cream as garden Roses, let us remember with 

 admiration the ancestral cow. For who shall despise those old China 

 Roses, which have brightened more than any other flower our English 

 homes, smiling through our cold and sunless days like the brother 

 born for adversity, and winning from the foreigner, as much perhaps 

 as any of our graces, this frequent praise, " Your land is the garden of 

 the world." The Frenchman, for example, as I can remember him in 

 my boyhood, who had been travelling on the straight, flat, hedgeless, 

 turfless roads of France, in a torpid, torrid, dusty diligence, was in 

 an ecstasy as he sat upon the Dover mail, and went smoothly and 

 cheerily, 10 miles per hour, through the meadows and the orchards, 

 the hop-yards and the gardens of Kent. But nothing pleased him 

 more than the prettiness of the wayside cottage, clothed with the 

 Honeysuckle and the China Rose, and fragrant with Sweet-Brier, Wall- 

 flower, Clove, and Stock. 



I may not urge the restoration of this village beauty to the modern 

 Rose-garden, but in the mixed garden and in the shrubbery the constant 

 brave "old Monthly," the last to yield in winter, the first to bloom in 

 spring, is still deserving of a place. He, at all events, is no more a rosar- 

 ian who sees no beauty in this rose, than he a florist who does not 

 love the meanest flower which grows. Nor must he neglect some 

 other old favourites in this family — such as Cramoisie Superieure, 

 honestly named, glowing and brilliant as any of our crimson Roses, 

 and forming a charming bed, or edging of a bed, especially in the 

 autumn — and Mrs Bosanquet, always fair, and good as beautiful, the 

 same, like a true lady, in an exalted or a low estate, on a standard or on 

 the ground, alone or in group, composed, graceful, not having one of 

 its pale pink delicate petals out of place. Both of these Roses thrive 

 well in pots, but they are most attractive, I think, on their own roots 

 out of doors, in a bed of rich light mellow loam, pruned according to 

 vigour of growth, and pegged down when their shoots are supple, so 

 as to present an uniform surface. 



When speaking of the Moss Rose generally, I anticipated the little 

 which I had to say of the Moss Perpetual (p. 202), and, passing on to 

 the Damask Perpetual, have but two Roses to commend, and these 

 only where space is unlimited and the love of Roses voracious. A 

 tender sadness comes to me thus speaking of them, a melancholy 

 regret, as when one meets in mid - life some goddess of our early 

 youth, and, out upon Time ! she has no more figure than a lighthouse, 

 and almost as much crimson in her glowing countenance as there is in 

 its revolving light ; and we are as surprised and disappointed as was 

 Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe when he met Mrs Siddons at Abbotsford, 

 and "she ate boiled beef, and swilled porter, and took snufF, and 



