192 A BOOK ABOUT ROSES 



garden, but the robbery of his farm, merely remark- 

 ing, with a quaint gravity and kindly satire, that, 

 * not doubting for a moment the lucrative wisdom of 

 applying the best manure in unlimited quantities to 

 the common hedgerow brier, he ventured, neverthe- 

 less, to express his hope that I would leave a little 

 for the wheat/ 



Simultaneously with this love of the Rose, there 

 deepened in my heart an indignant conviction that 

 the flower of flowers did not receive its due share of 

 public honours. I noticed that the lovers of the 

 Carnation had exhibitions of Carnations only, and 

 that the worshippers of the Tulip and the Auricula 

 ignored all other idols. I saw that the Queen of 

 Autumn, the Dahlia, refused the alliance of each 

 foreign potentate, when she led out her fighting 

 troops in crimson and gold, gorgeous. The Chry- 

 santhemum, alone in her glory, made the halls of 

 Stoke Newington gay. Even the vulgar hairy 

 Gooseberry maintained an exhibition of its own ; and 

 I knew a cottager whose kitchen was hung round 

 with copper kettles, the prizes which he had won with 

 his Roaring Lions, his Londons, Thumpers, and 

 Crown-Bobs. Was the Queen of Summer, forsooth, 

 to be degraded into a lady-in-waiting? Was the 

 royal supremacy to be lost ? No — like 



