DECEMBER. 
355 
they know well, as I know well from my own experience, that such an 
extension of facilities materially increases the demand ; the more abun¬ 
dantly and satisfactorily a man grows Roses, the more desirous he is 
to increase and diversify his collection. For the love of the Rose, as 
our Grand-Master at Sawbridgeworth has told us, never declines, but 
deepens. I remember that I thought some fifteen years ago “I shall 
be happy when I have got a hundred Rose trees ; ” but if I were asked 
now what would really satisfy, I could not conscientiously name any¬ 
thing under a hundred acres. Indeed I feel, with regard to Roses, 
very much like that Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, of whom the 
Lord Lieutenant, his cotemporary, remarked, “If I could give 
Hutchinson all England for his estate, he would want the Isle of Man 
for a Potato garden .” 
I am by no means singular in my greediness. .Never was the Rose 
so popular. Her majesty’s grand drawing-room at. St. James’s Hall, 
in July, seems to have enlarged her influence a thousand-fold, and 
I hear people talking already all over the country of her next public 
manifestation. Oh, dear! how amused I was the other day at a 
dinner party, to watch the expression of astonishment and indignation 
on old Lady —-’s face, when she heard that his reverence, the 
vicar, had actually had the audacity to plant that very day twelve new 
Rose trees. I thought she would have shyed her plate at him. 
“ Really,” she confided to me, “ it is no affair of mine, but how the 
clergy can incur these frightful expenses I am at a loss to know. Only 
think of our friend opposite laying out his income in Lord Palmerston 
and Louis Cliaix, Roses which, I assure you, are only just known in 
this country; and which my people have had great, difficulty in pro¬ 
curing at all;—and his poor dear wife with twins !. ” And she lifted up 
her hands and eyebrows as though the Bradford catastrophe was not a 
fiftieth part as horrible,—the real secret of her wrath being this, that 
the ecclesiastic was a rival exhibitor. 
Arriving in my ramble among the Roses (and one loves to think 
and write about them with the same happy freedom from restraint 
with which we saunter from flower to flojver in the sweet summer- 
tide), at the subject of exhibition and “ the Grand National ,” I am 
reminded that it can scarcely fail to interest Rose' growers to know 
which of their favourites showed most often in front at our first great 
meeting in St. James’s Hall; and it seems Jo me that the following 
statistics, collected from the admirable report which appeared in this 
periodical, will both interest the experienced and instruct the newly- 
initiated 
Rose grower :— 
• « » * 
Name of Rose. 
4 • • • « 
• • • » 
• Species. * 
How often 
exhibited 
in winning 
stands. 
Crested 
• • • • 
. Moss . • 
4 
Gloire des Mosseuses 
. ditto 
3 
Prolific 
• • • • 
. ditto 
3 
Salet 
. • . • . . . Perpetual * 
, 'i • * 
32 other varieties exhibited: one specimen of each. 
A A 2 
2 
