56 • A BOOK ABOUT ROSES. 



man, you may remember, was a muscular artist, more re- 

 markable for power than pathos ; and he went at the in- 

 strument, and shook and worried it as a terrier goes in at 

 rats. His exertions were sudorific ; and when he finished 

 the struggle, with beads on his brow, the sultan told him, 

 " that although he had heard the most renowned performers 

 of the age, he had never met one who — perspired so 

 freely!" Nor could I, with my heart as full of charity's 

 milk as a Cheshire dairy of the cow's, think of any higher 

 praise of the plot before me than that it Avas an admir- 

 able place for ferns ; and therefore, when my commentary 

 was received with an expressive smile of genteel disgust, as 

 though I had suggested that the allotment in question was 

 the site of all others for a jail, or had said, as Carlyle said 

 of the Royal Garden at Potsdam, that " it was one of the 

 finest Fog-preserves in Europe," then, without further pre- 

 varications, I told the truth. And the truth is, that this 

 boundless contiguity of shade is fatal, and every overhang- 

 ing tree is fatal as an upas-tree, to the Rose. As Ireland 

 has been said to be too near a great country ever to achieve 

 greatness for itself (I do not myself attribute its humidity 

 or its indolence, its famines or its Fenianism, to the vicinity 

 of England) ; so the Rose, in close proximity to a forest- 



