238 A BOOK ABOUT ROSES 



to Marechal Niel, its name becomes a cruel joke ; 

 your little gem is lost beside the Koh-i-noor, and 

 your bright star pales before the rising sun its 

 ineffectual fire. 



You will have another advantage in commencing 

 with your finest flowers, because of these you will 

 have (or ought to have) the larger stock, and will 

 thus be able to lay at the same time and in the 

 same order the foundation of your different collec- 

 tions, using the same corner-stone in each (begin 

 always with some glorious Rose, which must attract 

 the judicial eye, and make an impression upon the 

 judicial heart), and assimilating the arrangement, as 

 long as you possess the material. Much labour, 

 head-work, and leg-work is saved by this plan of 

 simultaneous structure. 



The amateur must not exhibit these larger Roses 

 when they have lost their freshness of colour, or when 

 the petals, opening at the centre, reveal the yellow 

 ' eye.' He must not place a Rose in his box because 

 it /las been superlatively beautiful. In the eyes of her 

 husband, the wife a matron should be lovely as the 

 wife a bride ; but the world never saw her in her 

 Honiton veil, and respectfully votes her a trifle pas see. 

 At the same time, let not the exhibitor be over-timid, 

 nor discard a Rose which has reached the summit of 

 perfection, and may descend, he knows not when, but 



