2l6 A BOOK ABOUT ROSES. 



time invaded London from the Thames ; but there was one 

 opponent, one only, whom they could not subdue. They 

 had to fight that day, not only the wars of the Roses, the 

 civil war for supremacy among themselves, but they had to 

 meet a rival, against whom they concentrated all their 

 powers in vain. 



A few months before the Rose-show, I made the ac- 

 quaintance, afterwards the dearest friendship of my life, of 

 John Leech, the artist ; and in the first of two hundred pre- 

 cious letters which I now possess from his pen, he etched 

 the prevision of a combat between Flora and Venus, which 

 subsequently appeared, more correctly but less prettily de- 

 lineated, in Punch, with the explanation infra^ which I 

 wrote, on his request. 



* In the days of the Great Stench of London, the Naiades ran from the 

 banks of Thamesis, with their pocket-handkerchiefs to their noses, and made a 

 complaint to the goddess Flora, how exceedingly unpleasant the dead dogs 

 were, and that they couldn't abide 'em— indeed they couldn't. And Flora 

 forthwith, out of her sweet charity, engaged apartments at the Hall of St 

 James's, and came up with 10,000 Roses to deodorise the river, and to revive 

 the town. But Venus no sooner heard of her advent than (as if to illustrate the 

 dictum of the satirist, " Women do so hate each other") she put on her best 

 bonnet, and went forth in all her loveliness to suppress " that conceited flower- 

 girl," who had dared to flirt at Chiswick, the Regent's Park, and the Cr}'stal 

 Palace, with her own favoured admirer, Mars. So, awful in her beauty, she 

 came in a revengeful glow, and Flora's Roses grew pale before the Roses on 



