188 IN A GLOUCESTERSHIRE GARDEN 



of the vale,' as if they were some wild English roses. 

 This high estimate of the musk rose — 



' The sweetest flower wild nature yields, 

 A fresh-blown musk rose ' — 



is a little surprising to us, for it is not a very attractive 

 rose, and is now very seldom seen, having been sup- 

 planted by its near relation, R. Brunonii, from Nepal, 

 probably only a geographical variety of the old musk 

 rose, but a very handsome rose, especially when allowed 

 to wander among and over bushes, for it does not like 

 pruning or training. To these roses I will merely add, 

 and strongly recommend, a very modern rose, Paul's 

 single white perpetual. I do not know its history, but 

 it is a very beautiful single rose, with clusters of large 

 pure white flowers, which last in flower a long time, and 

 I know of few better roses for a pillar. 



The more I study roses the more I feel that we 

 northerners have good reason to be proud of them, and 

 to be thankful for them, and Englishmen especially have 

 good reason for taking the flower as, above all others, 

 the flower of England. When Mr. Wallace returned 

 from the Malayan Archipelago, fresh from all the 

 beauties of tropical vegetation, he astonished many 

 English readers by asserting that English wild-flowers 

 gave a beauty of colour to English landscape which no 



