CONCERNING ROSE-SHOWS. 205 



good old father, whose delight was in agriculture, calmly 

 watched the robbery of his farm, merely remarking, with a 

 quaint gravity and kindly satire, that, " not doubting for a 

 moment the lucrative wisdom of applying the best manure 

 in unlimited quantities to the common hedgerow brier, he 

 ventured, nevertheless, to express his hope that I would 

 leave a little for the wheat." 



Simultaneously with this love of the Rose, there deepened 

 in my heart an indignant conviction that the flower of 

 flowers did not receive its due share of public honours. I 

 noticed that the lovers of the Carnation had exhibitions of 

 Carnations only, and that the worshippers of the Tulip 

 ignored all other idols. I saw that the Queen of Autumn 

 refused the alliance of each foreign potentate, when 

 she led out her fighting troops in crimson and gold gor- 

 geous. The Chrysanthemum, alone in her glory, made the 

 halls of Stoke Newington gay. Even the vulgar hairy 

 Gooseberry maintained an exhibition of its own ; and I 

 knew a cottager whose kitchen was hung round with copper 

 kettles, the prizes which he had won with his Roaring 

 Lions, his Londons, Thumpers, and Crown-Bobs. Was the 

 Queen of Summer, forsooth, to be degraded into a lady-in- 

 waiting ? Was the royal supremacy to be lost ? No — like 



