MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR XX1x 
or ‘“‘the garden for the Rose” he waged with much 
vigour. There was no doubt about it in his mind: 
it was perfectly plain, perfectly simple. It was the 
graceful (one might almost say, classical) outlines of 
the individual specimen that he wanted. To get the 
perfect specimen was the object of a garden. For 
roses in the mass he had no sympathy. In fact, 
they rather irritated him, his orderly mind telling 
him all the time that the blooms, however beauti- 
ful they might look so massed together, were 
none of them perfect, were none of them good 
individually. What he hked, best of all, was to 
have a single perfect rose in a specimen glass by 
itself—just to look at it, just to gaze upon its soft, 
graceful outlines. You could draw him many miles 
with a promise of that, but he would not step a yard 
to see “‘ banks of roses, arches of roses, hedges of 
roses.” If you pointed out the beauty of colouring 
that could be obtained by massing roses in such a 
way, he would tell you that it was a sign of 
decadence, and that the real object should be, like 
that of the Greeks of old, to obtain the “‘ perfect 
form.’ And, if you asked if he did not like to see a 
garden bright and beautiful with flowers, he would 
say “yes,” and would explain how fortunate the 
country was in having so many good nurserymen 
willing and capable of supplying you with any 
amount and any variety of flowers, other than roses. 
But the rose was to be the thing apart, a very 
Queen. Whether his views were right or wrong 
depends on the point of view, and is not the concern 
of this Memoir ; but the result was that his attention 
was entirely given up to so cultivating roses that they 
might produce the finest blooms. His advice on 
