FIRST FIGHT IN THE WARS OF THE ROSES. ,. 207 



allegiance to the Royal rose ; and I have performed 

 my promise as faithfully as the great Lord Bateman 

 himself, when " he wowed a wow, and kept it strong." 



To speak less fancifully and more closely to the 

 plain facts, I became from that summer's evening an 

 enthusiastic rose-grower. I dreamed about roses 

 that summer's night, and next morning hurried over 

 my early breakfast that I might canter to the nearest 

 nursery. A nursery ! I should as soon have thought, 

 twenty-four hours before, of visiting a nursery as a 

 Jew of spending his day at a pork-butcher's, or a 

 wooden-legged man of deriving enjoyment from a pro- 

 tracted sojourn in a boot-and-shoe shop ! And now 

 I was positively bewildered with admiration. I should 

 have liked to transfer the whole stock to my garden, 

 and did in my ignorance suggest the immediate 

 removal of a portion, to the surprised amusement of 

 the owner, who suggested that, as I might wish the 

 trees to survive for another season, November would 

 be a wiser date. Meantime he would cut me a 

 bouquet to soothe me in my disappointed impatience. 

 And I carried a bunch of roses home on horseback 

 about the size of a tree-peony, scornfully declining to 

 notice the sarcastic inquiry of a friend, whom I met 

 on the road, "Holloa, John Thomas! whatever aie 

 you doing, away from the back of the carriage ? " 



Autumn brought the catalogues, of which, if my 

 memory is true, there were at that time four only, 

 emanating from Messrs. Rivers, Paul, Lane, and 

 Wood. Ah ! had I studied my books at Oxford with 

 half the zest with which I devoured these catalogues, 

 what pre-eminence I might have won ! I read, 



