66 A BOOK ABOUT ROSES. 



CHAPTER V. 



SOILS. 



"What a constitution must that air and soil 

 of Herefordshire give the Rose !" So wrote Dr. 

 Lindley, praising the beautiful blooms which Mr. 

 Cranston brought from the King's Acre, by Here- 

 ford city, to the first grand National Rose-show, 

 And we aliens read with envy. Rivers, and the 

 Pauls, and Lane, and Francis, gazed sorrowfully a 

 while on the / in Hertfordshire ; from Sussex, so 

 it seemed to Messrs. Wood and Mitchell, all suc- 

 cess had fled: "So much for Buckingham," sighed 

 Mr. Turner, from the Slough of his deep despair; 

 in Wiltshire, even Keynes, the stout-hearted, 

 looked ruefully for a moment on his fair garden 

 as though it had been Salisbury Plain ; in Essex, 

 Mr. Cant of Colchester was mute as one of its 

 oysters ; and as these great leaders of Queen 

 Rosa's armies were seized with a brief despair, we 

 privates and non-commissioned officers were not 

 what we should have been with regard to knees, 

 and felt a sudden conviction that the time had 

 come when we ought to retire from the service. 



