U A BOOK ABOUT THE GARDEN. 



saults for the edification of some favoured hippo- 

 drome. 



A like joyous consternation, a like embarrassment 

 of happiness are mine, my friends, when, released 

 from the introductory part of my lecture, from my 

 allegorical snaffle, I find myself free to expatiate upon 

 a field of roses, turned out as it were into the " rosea 

 rura Velini," into those rose fields near Ghazepoor, 

 which the great Bishop Heber tells us extended over 

 many hundred acres, or into that " beautiful plain 

 covered with innumerable roses," of which we read in 

 the more recent " Wanderings of an Artist." So let me 

 have a metaphorical gallop to relieve my exuberance 

 of delight ; or rather, since the rosarium is not good 

 galloping ground, let me, like some nightingale just 

 arrived in a rose nursery, and who can " scarce get 

 out his notes for joy," take a preliminary fly over the 

 premises, with obligate and irregular music, ere I 

 settle down to sing in a more measured time and in a 

 more usual key. 



Hurrah, then, for the royal Eose ! for a Queen 

 who, like our own Victoria, reigns the wide world 

 over in loving hearts ! Hurrah for old England's 

 emblem ! emblem true of a happy land, whose sons 

 flush quickly with a righteous anger to resent injustice 

 and to defend the right, and whose daughters blush 

 with a roseate beauty, with the " shame, which is a 

 glory and a grace." Hurrah for the precious perfumed 

 flower, which, for seven months of our fickle and 

 inclement year, gives its welcome beauty to high and 

 low, admired and loved by us all, from the patrician, 

 who sees it in the golden epergne of the banquet, to 



