278 LONDON PARKS & GARDENS 



P/an. Ay, sharp and piercing to maintain his truth ; 



Whiles thy consuming canker eats his falsehood. 

 Som. Well, I'll find friends to wear my bleeding roses, 



That shall maintain what I have said is true. 



Warwick. And here I prophesy this brawl to-day, 



Grown to this faction in the Temple-garden, 

 Shall send between the red rose and the white 

 A thousand souls to death and deadly night. 



With such a tradition the Temple Garden should 

 never be without its roses. They are one of those 

 friendly plants which will do their best to fight against 

 fog and smoke, and flower boldly for two or three years 

 in succession : so a supply of red and white, and the 

 delightful Rosa mundi^ the " York and Lancaster," 

 could without much difficulty be seen there every 

 summer. Certainly some of the finest roses in existence 

 have been in the Temple Gardens, as the Flower Shows, 

 which are looked forward to by all lovers of horticulture, 

 have for many years been permitted to take place in these 

 historic grounds. How astonished those adherents of 

 the red or white roses would have been to see the colours, 

 shades, and forms which the descendants of those briars 

 now produce. The Plantagenet Garden would not con- 

 tain many varieties, although every known one was 

 cherished in every^garden, as roses have always been first 

 favourites. Besides the briars, dog roses, and sweet 

 briars, there was the double white and double red, a 

 variety of Rosa gallica. Many so-called old-fashioned 

 roses, such as the common monthly roses, came to Eng- 

 land very much later, and the vast number of gorgeous 

 hybrids are absolutely new. Elizabethan gardens had a 

 fair show of roses with centifolia, including moss and 

 Provence roses, and York and Lancaster, Rosa lutea^ musk, 



