CONCERNING ROSE-SHOWS. 203 



next valiant knight who made his bow to the 

 Queen of Beauty, and won high honor in her Hsts. 

 Then followed Mr. Adam Paul of Cheshunt, and 

 then Mr. Lane of Berkhampstead. These were 

 the heroes of my youth ; and when I joined the 

 service, a raw recruit, in 1 846, the four last named 

 — Rivers, Wood, Paul, Lane — were its most dis- 

 tinguished chiefs. But our warfare in those days 

 was mere skirmishing. We were only a contin- 

 gent of Flora's army — the Rose was but an item 

 of the general flower-shoAv. We were never called 

 to the front : we were placed in no van, save that 

 which took us to the show. And yet, then as 

 now, whatever might be its position, the Rose was 

 the favorite flower ; then as now, the visitor, op- 

 pressed by the size and by the splendor of gigan- 

 tic specimen plants, would turn to it and sigh : 

 *' There is nothing, after all, like the Rose." 



Year by year my enthusiasm increased. I was 

 like Andrew Marvel's fawn, when 



" All its chief delight was still 

 On Roses thus itself to fill ;" 



and my Roses multiplied from a dozen to a score,, 

 from a score to a hundred, from a hundred to a 

 thousand, from one to five thousand trees. They 

 came into my garden a very small band of set- 



