THE SIX OF SPADES. 103 



whose fragrance we were wont to express, with some 

 precocious insight into the perfumery business, by 

 crushing its leaves with our small fingers ; and the 

 Old Monthly, which looked in at our schoolroom 

 window, and tapped thereon with its buds at times, as 

 though inviting us, like the lover of " Maud," to 

 come into the garden, and be glad. How we used to 

 envy those happy flowers, rejoicing in the sunlight, 

 dancing in the summer breeze, unconscious of pot- 

 hooks and hangers, emancipated from the thraldom of 

 high-backed chairs, perfectly indifferent as to the 

 orthography of the word cat, and not caring one dew- 

 drop when who was king of where, or which was 

 capital of what ! The bees and the butterflies, when 

 they came to call upon the rose, used to laugh, I am 

 confident, at our bare little legs, dangling from the 

 uncomfortable sedilia just now alluded to ; the saucy 

 sparrows twittered at our state ; and the blackbirds, 

 eying us from a contiguous laurel, whistled comic 

 songs at our expense. 



They are gone, the roses of my childhood, deposed 

 by fairer flowers. Where those six held dominion 

 absolute, six hundred distinct varieties have unveiled 

 their beauty to the summer moons. They are gone 

 from our gaze, but from our loving memory they shall 

 never fade. I have a group of them, exquisitely 

 painted by the skilled touch of a vanished hand, in a 

 dear old family scrap-book, which I would not give 

 for anything in the Bodleian Library; and I often 

 turn to them with a tender sorrow, a grief which is 

 almost gladness, having a hope as pure and beautiful 

 as they. 



