104 A BOOK ABOUT ROSES. 



ginning of June. And if neighbors, who are not 

 true lovers of the Rose, expostulate, and condemn 

 the waste, quote for their edification those true 

 words of Victor Hugo, in Les Miserables : " The 

 beautifid is as useful as the useful, perhaps more 

 soy 



We have found our situation, we have pre- 

 pared our soils : we will speak next of the ar- 

 rangement of the Rosary, and then of the Rose 

 itself 



CHAPTER Vn. 



ARRANGEMENT. 



Every gardener must be an infidel — I am, 

 and I glory in the fact — on the subject of infidelity. 

 The proofs and the precepts of natural and re- 

 vealed religion are brought so frequently and im- 

 pressively before him, that he cannot believe in 

 unbelief He takes a seed, a bulb, a cutting (who 

 made them ?) ; he places them in the soil which is 

 most congenial (who made it ?) ; the seed germi- 

 nates, the bulb spindles, the cutting strikes ; he 

 tends and waters (but who sends the former and 

 the latter rain ?) ; and the flower comes forth in 

 glory. Does he say, with the proud Assyrian : 



