Flowers and Gardens 



seriously injured. You cannot believe that 

 the work of God is faulty here, and that 

 the Wild Rose is an imperfect creation.^ 

 You never would have thought it so if 

 you had seen it before you saw the double 

 flower. With you it is only faulty by 

 comparison. So that here is a pure, 

 noble, and, as all men of right feeling 

 will tell you, a perfect work of its kind, 

 in which you can take no pleasure, 

 because to you it seems weak and faulty. 

 Now, to speak my own feelings, though 

 in turning to the Garden Rose I cannot 

 feel it faulty any more than you do, I 

 soon find that I miss something there ; 

 that is, I should soon be wearied if I 

 had none but such Roses as these, and 

 was absolutely debarred from the com- 

 plete wild ones. And do you not see 

 the reason of this, viz., that the beauties 

 of the cultivated Rose are more especially 

 of that sensuous striking kind which can 

 hardly be overlooked, and are apt to 

 veil in their blaze the simpler and less 

 obtrusive, though more deeply satisfying, 



' Whether God ever purposely makes flowers defective 

 is quite another question. But such instances are cer- 

 tainly exceptional. And the ground on which the single 

 Rose is here condemned would condemn the large 

 majority of our most beautiful single flowers upon the 

 general principle of their construction. 

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