XVI. ABOUT ROSES. - Flora Au A Memorable Conversation - Confession of Failure tocratic and Capricious - Love the First Element of Success -Pure Air-Shelter, not Shade-Soil - Form Standards and Bushes - Stocks - Manetti and Briar Varieties - Exhibition and Garden Roses - Summary of Experience - Where to purchase. MANY years ago, in the palmy days of the Garrick Club, when Dickens and Thackeray, and John Leech, and A'Beckett, and Douglas Jerrold, and Shirley Brooks, and many other bright stars no longer visible in this firmament were its constant inmates, I was engaged there one evening, like a good gardener, in the act of Fumigation - I was destroying a weed. I had two companions, and a conversation arose between them concerning a work which had been recently published, and had created a great interestBuckle's "History of Civilization in England." The dialogue ultimately resolved itself into an argument as to the future achievements of science and philosophy one of the speakers, who was then among the most brilliant writers of The Times newspaper, prophesying unlimited power and happiness from the victorious March of Intellect; the other expressing far less confidence in the capacities of human reason, maintaining, with Newton, that it always had been, as it was and would be, but as a little child picking pebbles on the great sea's shore, and that for himself, the chief result of his knowledge was to show him how little he knew. My humble sympathies were all with him who expressed these latter views of the question-his name was William Makepeace Thackeray — and my humble sympathies are with him now, when, after half a century of enthusiastic love among the Roses-half a century of daily observation, anxious inquiry, careful culture — I come to communicate results. I feel much as I felt when, travelling one day on the underground rail, I misunderstood directions, and crossing the wrong bridge, found myself, after forty minutes' absence, at the station from which I started. I go back fifty years - nay, to a yet more distant period, for there is a tradition in my family that my love of the rose began with babyhood, and that I made a clutch at an artificial specimen which adorned my nurse's cap (I can't say whether the rose was a monthly rose, but I have a strong idea the nurse was), and tried to devour it, and so to die of a rose, without the aromatic pain — and I recall the same unsatisfied craving for the rose in its perfection which I feel to-day; and though since that distant date I have grown roses by the thousand, and instituted rose shows, and won silver cups by the score, and walked through miles of roses as a judge, and written a book about roses, I am here after all to confess that my knowledge, as compared with my ignorance, is as a penny squib to a comet, as an unfledged tomtit to a flying eagle; that I have made mistakes innumerable; that I have planted too deep and too shallow, pruned too long and too short, too early and too late, manured too much and too little, exhibited flowers which were superannuated, and flowers which had not arrived at rosehood; that I have succeeded where I expected to fail, and failed where I hoped to succeed. The explanation is, that the Rose, like the only object of our admiration which excels her in beauty, that Flora, like the rest of the fair sex, is delightfully mysterious and difficult to understand. From the variableness of our climate, from differences of soil, from delicacy of constitution, lovely roses, like lovely ladies, are by no means easy of cultivation. In both cases you may be too attentive, and then the objects of your affection exalt themselves unduly, or, as we gardeners term it, "run to leaf." On the other hand, if you have been neglectful or indifferent, when you go to gather roses you will find thorns. You must be devoted, but not too demonstrative-hopeful, but not presumptuous; and then, when your loyalty and love are proved, you may win the smile of beauty; even then uncertain and capricious, coming sometimes when we least expect it, and suddenly changing into a frown, without a glimpse of explanation. How graciously and beautifully that Marie Baumann came out on the eve of the show, when you had given up hope, and how, on the contrary, that Marie Finger (will any one inform me whether Marry Finger means the third of the left hand?), on whom we relied so confidently, shut herself up, and remained motionless, as though in a swoon, despite every effort which was made to rouse her, by blowing into her face, and putting her feet in hot water. But you will begin to murmur internally, "Surely this man is not come all the way to America to tell us that he knows nothing," if not to express your remonstrance, as when the Blue Ox of Artemus. Ward rubbed off some of his paint against the central pole of the exhibition tent, and the spectators openly declared that "that sort of thing would not go down in their enlightened district." I hear you say, "Let us have the results of your experience, however small they may be ; as when an Oxford Examiner, being told by an undergraduate who had failed dismally, that he had not been questioned upon the subjects which he knew the best, tore off a tiny scrap from the paper before him, and handed it to the plaintiff, saying, "Be so good as to write what you know on that." Gladly and unreservedly I offer you the results of my experience with regard to the cultivation of the Rose. In the first place, as I have already intimated, your heart must be in your enterprise. There is a good deal of "mere verbiage"-frothy effervescence, humbug — in some of those gushing expressions of delight and admiration which we hear so often. Oh, Dean Hole, what a heavenly ! 66 duck of a rose form as you see it 66 "Well, it's not quite in its best there.” No; but isn't it too awfully jollily not quite?" Misled on one occasion by these professions of adoration, I presented a lady with a lovely rose, and, not long after, when she became intense upon some other topic, she began to pick off the petals! I stood astounded, like Launcelot when "the Queen Brake from the vast, oriel-embowering vine and then I remembered that I had business in another direction, and I went to it, a sadder and a wiser man. Then there are not a few professed admirers of roses who only want them to show, or to cut, or to make their neighbours jealous. They have no true appreciation of the flower as a thing of beauty and a joy for ever, but regard it as ornamental furniture, and the sort of thing one likes to have, you know. They come into your garden, and you show them some specimen of perfect loveliness, and they turn away, saying disdainfully, "We have heaps of those (as if they were coals or potatoes); or, should it happen to be something which they do not possess, they condescend to take a note of the name, and they seem to think that they are conferring a great honour, not only upon you, but upon the whole vegetable kingdom, when they make the announcement, "We must have that." Supposing the love to be sincere and the intentions hearty, what next? Pure air. And with a most unaffected sorrowful sympathy I speak those words, because to hundreds who love the Rose as well as I do they mean, no hope. Every year, and many and many a time in that year, "when the |