MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR xxix 



or "the garden for the Eose" he waged with much 

 vigour. There was no doubt about it in his mind : 

 it was perfectly plain, perfectly simple. It was the 

 graceful (one might almost say, classical) outlines of 

 the individual specimen that he wanted. To get the 

 perfect specimen was the object of a garden. For 

 roses in the mass he had no sympathy. In fact, 

 they rather irritated him, his orderly mind telling 

 him all the time that the blooms, however beauti- 

 ful they might look so massed together, wei;e 

 none of them perfect, were none of them good 

 individually. What he liked, best of all, was to 

 have a single perfect rose in a specimen glass by 

 itself — just to look at it, just to gaze upon its soft, 

 graceful outlines. You could draw him many miles 

 with a promise of that, but he would not step a yard 

 to see " banks of roses, arches of roses, hedges of 

 roses." If you pointed out the beauty of colouring 

 that could be obtained by massing roses in such a 

 way, he would tell you that it was a sign of 

 decadence, and that the real object should be, like 

 that of the Greeks of old, to obtain the " perfect 

 form." And, if you asked if he did not like to see a 

 garden bright and beautiful with flowers, he would 

 say " yes," and would explain how fortunate the 

 country was in having so many good nurserymen 

 willing and capable of supplying you with any 

 amount and any variety of flowers, other than roses. 

 But the rose was to be the thing apart, a very 

 Queen. Whether his views were right or wrong 

 depends on the point of view, and is not the concern 

 of this Memoir ; but the result was that his attention 

 was entirely given up to so cultivating roses that they 

 might produce the finest blooms. His advice on 



