64 A BOOK ABOUT ROSES. 



not felt in his pocket. The pleasure-grounds, It is true, are 

 too bleak for prize blooms, but in the large, half-cultivated 

 kitchen-garden, I found the most delightful corner, with an 

 eastern aspect ; put in one hundred Briers ; budded them 

 last summer ; manured them abundantly this ; and am 

 now, between ourselves, and sub rosd, in such a bumptious 

 condition, that you'd think I'd made the Roses myself" 



There is, alas ! one locality, beneath that dark canopy of 

 smoke which hangs over and around our large cities and 

 manufacturing towns, wherein it is not possible to grow the 

 Rose in its glory ; and many a time as I have stood in the 

 pure air and sunshine among my own beautiful flowers, I 

 have felt a most true and sorrowful sympathy for those 

 who, loving the Rose as fondly as I do, are unable to 

 realise its perfect beauty. Well, no man can have his earthly 

 happiness just in the way he wills ; but every man, as a rule, 

 has his equal share, and these men, I doubt not, have other 

 successes as solace and compensation. Nay, are not their 

 Roses, which we, more favoured, should regard as disap- 

 pointments, successes to them, great and gratifying t If 

 Mr Shirley Hibberd, for example, whose "i^^j^^ Book''' I 

 commend to urban and oppidan amateurs, can grow good 

 Roses within four miles of the General Post-Office — and I 



