ROSES FOR EXHIBITION. 221 



his neighbours, by praising their Rosas, so pale, so puny, in 

 comparison ? Their voices to his ear are harsh, irritating ; 

 they are as disagreeable as the crowings of contiguous cocks 

 to the ears of the game bantam ; and he feels it to be his 

 solemn duty to roll those knights in the dust. 



I offer my services as his esquire, and my advice as a 

 veteran how to invert and pulverise his foes. By foes I mean 

 those miserable knights who presume to grow and to show 

 Roses without a careful study of these chapters. Not 

 thinking exactly as we do, they are of course heretical and 

 contumacious. They must be unhorsed. Then, perhaps, 

 lying peacefully on their backs in the sawdust, they may 

 see the error of their ways, and come to a better mind. 

 They may rise up, sorer and wiser men, and, meekly seeking 

 the nearest reformatory, may gradually amend and improve, 

 until at last they become diligent readers of this book, and 

 respectable subjects of the Queen of Flowers. Be it mine, 

 meanwhile, to teach the virtuous amateur how to buy a 

 charger, and how to ride him, what Roses to show, and how 

 to show them, first reminding him that he must have a good 

 stable, good corn, and good equipments in readiness for his 

 steed — must be armed before he competes with those 

 weapons which I have named before as essential to success, 



