74 A BOOK ABOUT ROSES. 



but this gritty rubbish demoralises whatever comes. You 

 may expel nature with a muck-fork on Monday, but on 

 Tuesday morning she will be back, and grinning. 



This exception, however, only proves the rule, that dif- 

 ficulties must yield to cultivation, and to free-trade in soil. 

 This is, no doubt, a matter of Radical Reform {i^adix, 

 genitive radicis, a root), but the Conservatories have taken 

 a decided lead in it. The growers of stove and greenhouse 

 plants collect their material from all quarters ; from India, 

 the fibres of the cocoa-nut ; their sand from Reigate ; their 

 peat from Seven-Oaks ; their leaf-mould, their Sphagnum 

 and other mosses, from forest and bog ; their top-spits from 

 the rich old pasture ; their manures, natural and artificial, 

 from Peru to the farmyard. They stand in their potting- 

 sheds surrounded by these varied articles of home and 

 foreign produce, even as the men of Gunter among the rich 

 ingredients of the matrimonial cake. Regard, too, the per- 

 fect drainage provided for these plants ; no chronic satura- 

 tion, dangerous to life, as all dropsies are ; no perpetual 

 conflict between air and water, but each exercising its 

 function in peace. And yet many a man, who knows all 

 this, and practises it within doors, stands helpless and 

 hopeless on the soil without. I have walked out of houses 



