CAUSES OF FAILURE. 7 



debility." As a rule, the amateur Rosarian has 

 made about as much progress as George III. with 

 his fiddle. After two years' tuition, the King asked 

 his tutor, Viotti, what he thought of his pupil : 

 ** Sire," replied the professor, " there are three 

 classes of violinists ; those who cannot play at all, 

 those who play badly, and those who play well. 

 Your majest}' is now commencing to enter upon the 

 second of these classes." There is not a garden 

 nowadays of any pretension, which has not its 

 collection of Roses, and vet there is not one p-ar- 

 den in twenty where the flower is realized in its 

 beauty. I have scarcely known at times whether 

 to laugh or weep, when I have been conducted 

 witli a triumphal air by the proprietor of one of 

 those dismal slaughter-houses which he calls his 

 Rosary. The collection is surrounded by a few 

 miserable climbers, justly gibbeted on poles or 

 hung in rusty chains, and consists of lanky stand- 

 ards, all legs and no head, after the manner of 

 giants, or of stunted ** dwarfs," admirably named 

 and ugly as Quilp ; the only sign of health and 

 vigor being the abundant growth of the Manetti 

 stock, which has smothered years ago the small 

 baby committed to its care, but is still supposed 

 to be the child itself, and is carefully pruned year 

 after year in expectation of a glow of beauty. 



