282 A BOOK ABOUT ROSES. 



in prosperity, as well as in adversity, to preserve 

 the equal mind. 



But which will be his lot to-day ? The crisis 

 approaches, and the stern mandate of the peremp- 

 tory police is already sounding in his ears : " This 

 tent must be cleared for the Judges'' 



It used to be said at our flower-shows : " Oh, 

 any one can judge the Roses;" and when, few in 

 quantity and feeble in quality, they formed but a 

 small item of the exhibition, they had, of course, 

 no special claims ; but this indifference unhappily 

 prevailed long after the Rose had become a chief 

 attraction in our summer shows, and even where 

 it was the only flower exhibited. At our great 

 Rose-shows we have succeeded to some extent in 

 eliminating from the halls of justice incompetent 

 judges ; but elsewhere the Rosarian takes with his 

 Roses a very anxious heart. In the summer of 

 1868, one of our most successful competitors, a 

 Leicestershire clergyman, who had just won two 

 first-prizes at the Crystal Palace, took some Roses 

 equally good to a small provincial show. Facile 

 princeps, he was not even commended ; and on 

 remonstrating, was informed by one of the judges 

 that his Roses, to which precedence had been given 

 at a national contest, '* were not the right sorts for 

 exhibition^ The fact is, that three varieties of 



