CHAPTER V. 



SOILS. 



" What a constitution must that air and soil of Hereford- 

 shire give the Rose ! " So wrote Dr Lindley, praising the 

 beautiful blooms which Mr Cranston brought from the 

 King's Acre, by Hereford city, to the first grand National 

 Rose-show. And we aliens read with envy. Rivers, and 

 the Pauls, and Lane, and Francis, gazed sorrowfully a while 

 on the / in Hertfordshire ; from Sussex, so it seemed to 

 Messrs Wood and Mitchell, all success had fled ; " So much 

 for Buckingham," sighed Mr Turner from the Slough of his 

 deep despair ; in Wiltshire, even Keynes, the stout-hearted, 

 looked ruefully for a moment on his fair garden as though 

 it had been Salisbury Plain ; in Essex, Mr Cant of Col- 

 chester was mute as one of its oysters ; and as these great 

 leaders of Queen Rosa's armies were seized with a brief 

 despair, we privates and non-commissioned officers were not 

 what we should have been with regard to knees, and felt a 



