68 A BOOK ABOUT ROSES. 



woods and lanes and hedges are clothed at sum- 

 mertide with Roses, they prefer the stolid convic- 

 tion that the stars in their courses fight against 

 them, that meteorology and geology are their 

 bitter foes. Look over your garden-wall with a 

 beautiful Rose in your coat, and your neighbor, 

 loitering with his hands in his pockets, knee-deep 

 in groundsel, amid his beds undrained, undug, will 

 sigh from the depths of his divine despair: ''What 

 a soil yours is for the Rose !" Some of my own 

 friends talk to me regularly as the summer comes, 

 not as though I had any special fondness or took 

 any special pains, but as if my garden would grow 

 excellent Roses, whether I liked it or no. At 

 first, and as a neophyte, I used to feel a little irri- 

 tation when all the glory was given to the ground; 

 and I remember upon one occasion that I could 

 not refrain from informing a gentleman (who 

 bored me with the old unchanging commentary) 

 that wild Rose-trees, transplanted from the hedge- 

 row to my garden in the autumn, grew flowers 

 large enough for exhibition the next summer but 

 one. It was the simple fact concerning budded 

 Briers, but he took away the inference, which I 

 blush to own was meant for him, that the trans- 

 formation was effected by the soil solely; and he 

 was very angry, I heard afterwards, when his 



