i INTRODUCTION 5 



be able to tell, with authority and with much interest, 

 to that majority of his unlearned parishioners who are 

 themselves tillers of the soil. If there is no room in 

 the parsonage garden, it is seldom indeed that some 

 little piece of glebe cannot be taken in to be the pride 

 of his heart and the focus of his midsummer hopes. 

 And now that we are all so poor, and likely to be poorer 

 still, there will be the more encouragement for him to 

 do the Rose work with his oa\ti hands, and to summon 

 the aid of his single useful man only at actual show 

 time, for the carting of manure, or for pressure in 

 planting. 



He will thus become a real amateur, a true son of 

 Adam, and genuine brother of the back-ache, with 

 many thorns in his fingers and rough and hardened 

 hands ; but his Roses will be truly his own, he will have 

 won them, and under the Creator will actually have 

 made them himself. And not only will they seem to 

 him brighter and purer and sweeter than any other 

 Roses, but he will probably find, in comparison and 

 competition, that they are better than those of his 

 brother amateurs who do not personally attend to their 

 plants; and it will be a great thought for him that 

 other far richer men may have grand and glorious 

 gardens, but that he in his humble little plot with his 

 own hands raises some of the finest Roses in England. 



