CHAPTER V 



SOILS 



* What a constitution must that air and soil of 

 Herefordshire give the Rose ! ' So wrote Dr. 

 Lindley, praising the beautiful blooms which Mr, 

 Cranston brought from the King's Acre, by Hereford 

 city, to the first grand National Rose Show. And 

 we aliens read with envy. Rivers, and the Pauls, 

 and Lane, and Francis, gazed sorrowfully a while 

 on the / in Hertfordshire ; from Sussex, so it seemed 

 to Messrs. Wood and Mitchell, all success had fled ; 



* So much for Buckingham,' sighed Mr. Turner, from 

 the slough of his deep despair ; in Wiltshire, even 

 Keynes, the stout - hearted, looked ruefully for a 

 moment on his fair garden as though it had been 

 Salisbury Plain ; in Essex, Mr. Cant of Colchester 

 was mute as one of its oysters ; and as these great 

 leaders of Queen Rosa's armies were seized with a 

 brief despair, we privates and non - commissioned 

 officers were not what we should have been with 

 regard to knees, and felt a sudden conviction that 



