34 
COMPANION TO THE FLORAL MAGAZINE. 
ROSY RECOLLECTIONS. 
No. 2. 
It was a Rose, I say, which confronted me one summer’s evening, as 1 
sauntered round my garden, thinking far more of the weed between my 
lips than of the beautiful flowers at my feet, and opened my eyes and my 
heart once more. Twenty summers will soon have sped since I paused, 
I know not why, before Rose D’Aguesseau, Gallica, but I can recall that 
glorious bloom, reproduce it in memory, (though I have stooped since then 
over thousands,) as truthfully, as charmingly, as when I first saw it glow¬ 
ing in the western sun. It stopped, it startled me. Did you ever, my 
reader, in early childhood betroth yourself to some tiny damsel, solemnly 
designate her your “ little wifey,” and swear eternal love ? And was it 
your destiny again to meet her, after an absence of some half-score years, 
no longer a child, with traces of toffy on her small pinafore, but— 
“ A daughter of the gods, 
Divinely fair, and most divinely tall,” 
re-asserting her ancient sway, with such a resistless majesty as took your 
breath away ? If so, you will remember, mingled with that strange sur¬ 
prise and happiness, a feeling of regret and shame, that you should have 
so long forsaken and almost forgotten your first, and, as you now confess, 
your last and only love. It was thus with this Rose and me. “ Young 
man,” that Rose seemed to say, “ behold one whom you have despised, 
deserted ! Behold one to whom, in days when it was your chief, unweary¬ 
ing gladness to wander among the flowers and love them, you plighted 
your early troth. Y r ou forsook me, and for what? At first, for sparrow- 
nets and baiting-needles, for skates and pony-whips, for bats and foot¬ 
balls. Latterly, for your hunters, vour flirtations, your London tailors. 
Ah ! you blush, you repent, you return. Well, then, I will be generous; 
I will forget all, save our old affection. Henceforth be faithful, and in 
your fidelity you shall find a purer, surer happiness than any you have 
known since you left me to blush, unseen by any but the gardener, and 
to waste my sweetness on the bees and butterflies.” 
I went down upon my knees, (metaphorically I mean, not upon the 
gravel, for I was arrayed in my “ extra-fine, double-milled, evening pants” 
at <£2. 65. the pair, and could not afford the genuflection,) I went down, 
and acknowledged my transgressions. I renewed my broken vows to 
Flora; I swore a lasting allegiance to the Royal rose; and I have per¬ 
formed my promise, as faithfully as the great. Lord Bateman himself, 
when “ he wowed a wow, and kept it strong.” 
To speak less fancifully and more closely to the plain facts, I became 
from that summer’s evening an enthusiastic Rose-grower. I dreamed 
about Roses that summer’s night, and next morning hurried over my 
early breakfast that I might canter to the nearest Nursery. A Nursery ! 
I should as soon have thought, twenty-four hours before, of visiting a 
