I COMMENCED my selection of garden Roses - that is, of Roses which are beautiful upon the tree, but not the most suitable for exhibition - with the Provence and the Moss, because these were the Roses which I loved the first. They had but few contemporaries alike precious to our eyes and noses in the garden of my childhood; - the York and Lancaster, the Alba, the Damask, the Sweet Brier, the old Monthly; and these also shall suggest, if you please, our route through the land of Roses.

First, then, with reference to the York and Lancaster - thus called because it bears in impartial stripes the colours, red and white, of those royal rivals who fought the Wars of the Roses - although I cannot commend its flimsy flowers, as gaudily and as scantily draped as the queen of a ballet or burlesque, I must claim a place in the rosary for a few variegated Roses very superior to their prototype. Œillet Par-fait is so truly named that a skilful florist, seeing a cut bloom of it for the first time, would only be convinced by a close inspection that it was not a Carnation but a Rose. With a clear and constant variegation of white and crimson stripes, it is marvellously like some beautiful Bizarre; and Perle des Panachees, white and rose, is almost as effective as another gay deceiver. Œillet Flammande and Tricolor de Elandres, though not so striking and distinct - their triple colours, white, lilac, and red, being somewhat dingy and confused - are always curious, and sometimes pleasing. These variegated Roses are easily cultivated, growing freely on the Brier with liberal treatment and moderate pruning.

They are affiliated in the catalogues to the family of Gallicas. But what are Gallicas?

"Gallica," responds the intelligent schoolboy, "is a Latin adjective, feminine gender, and signifying French." But can the intelligent schoolboy, or the still more intelligent adult, inform us why the Latin for French should be applied to this particular section only of the multitudinous Roses sent to us from France? "They who send," it may be answered, "make a special claim, for they call them ' Rosiers de Provins,' and Provins surely is in France, department Seine-et-Marne." Yes! but with every grateful recognition of the debt which we owe to French rosarians, it is well known that in this instance the claim cannot be proved. The birthplace of the Rose called Gallica is unknown, disputed, like the birthplace of Homer. "It is from Asia," says one; "it is the Rose of Miletus, mentioned by Pliny." "It was first found," writes a second, "upon Italian soil." "It came from Holland," cries Tertius, "beyond a doubt, and Van Eden was the man who introduced it".

But I have asked this question with an ulterior view. It is time, I think, for some alterations in the nomenclature and classification of the Rose. When summer Roses - Roses, that is, which bloom but once - were almost the only varieties grown, and when hybridisers found a splendid market for novelties in any quantities, new always, and distinct in name, the subdivisions yet remaining in our catalogues were interesting, no doubt, to our forefathers, and more intelligible, let us hope, than they are to us. Let us believe that it was patent to their shrewder sense why pink Roses were called Albas, and Roses whose hues were white and lemon were described as Damask. Let us suppose that they could distinguish at any distance the Gallica from the Provence Rose, and that when they heard the words Hybrid China, instead of being reminded, as I am, of a cross between a Cochin and a Dorking fowl, they recognised an infinity of distinctive attributes which estrange that variety from the Hybrid Bourbon in the most palpable and objective form.

Though it may be difficult for us to understand why the Persian Yellow, brought to England from Persia by Sir H. Willock, should have been promptly described as an Austrian Brier - and we are a trifle perplexed to comprehend whence the latter, discovered first in Italy, derived its appellation - let us be sure that it was all plain, and clear as the light, to them.

But now that these summer Roses are no longer paramount - rapidly disappearing, on the contrary, before the superior and more enduring beauty of those varieties which bloom in summer and autumn too; now that several divisions formerly recognised are gone from the catalogues, and others include but two or three able-bodied Roses on their muster-roll - it would be advisable, I think, to ignore altogether these minor distinctions, and to classify as summer Roses all those which bloom but once. Not without a painful sigh can we older rosarians witness the removal of our old landmarks - not without a loyal sorrow do we say farewell to friends who have brightened our lives with so much gladness; but we cannot long remember our losses, surrounded as we are by such abundant gains, and the tears of memory must pass away as quickly as the dew in summer. We ring out the old with funeral bells; we ring in the new with a merry peal. Pensive upon our former favourites, and poring over ancient lists, we are as wanderers in some fair burial-ground, half garden and half graves (would that "God's acre" were always so!), reading mournfully the names of the departed.

Let us rejoice the rather to leave the shade of melancholy boughs for the sunlit ground, which is garden all of it, and let us return to the summer Roses, demanding and deserving admission.

The white and red Roses of my childhood have long left the garden in which they grew. I see the former sometimes by old farmhouses and in cottage plots, wildly vigorous as a gypsy's hair, and covering huge bushes with its snowy flowers profusely, like a Guelder Rose, recalling the suggestion of the elder Pliny, that once upon a time the land we live in was named, after its white Roses, Albion - ob albas rosas.* But the latter, the Damask, with its few rich velvety-crimson petals, is a memory, and that is all. Nor do I ask a restoration in either case; only that they may be replaced by better Roses - the White by Blanchefleur, very pretty, although the blanche is decidedly a French white; by Madame Hardy, a true white, and a well-formed Rose, but, alas! "green-eyed," like "jealousy" - envious, it maybe, of Madame Zoutman, who, though not of such a clear complexion, is free from ocular infirmities; or, with more reason, of Princesse Clementine, before described (see p. 199) as one of our best white Roses; by Princesse de Lamballe, which most resembles the Alba of my boyhood, producing an abundance of Roses, distinct and pretty, but undersized; and by Triomphe de Bayeux, whose praise has been sung at p. 151, supra.