26o 



A BOOK ABOUT ROSES 



patiently, noting his failures, and making every effort 

 to overcome them. Fighting for the prize, he re- 

 sembles in one point, and one only, I trust, the prize- 

 fighter — when judgment, temper, self-mastery are lost, 

 the battle is lost also. They will tell him not only 

 how to win his laurels, but how to wear them grace- 

 fully ; in prosperity, as well as in adversity, to pre- 

 serve the equal mind. 



But which will be his lot to-day? The crisis 

 approaches, and the stern mandate of the peremptory 

 police is already sounding in his ears, * This tent must 

 be cleared for the Judges! 



It used to be said at our flower-shows, ^ Oh, anyone 

 can judge the Roses ' ; and when, few in quantity and 

 feeble in quality, they formed but a small item of the 

 . exhibition, they had, of course, no special claims ; but 

 this indifference, unhappily, prevailed long after the 

 Rose had become a chief attraction in our summer 

 shows, and even where it was the only flower exhi- 

 bited. At our great Rose-shows we have almost 

 succeeded in eliminating from the halls of justice 

 incompetent judges ; but elsewhere the Rosarian 

 takes with his Roses a very anxious heart. In the 

 summer of 1868, one of our most successful com- 

 petitors, a Leicestershire clergyman, who had just 

 won two first prizes at the Crystal Palace, took some 

 Roses equally good to a small provincial show. Facile 



