Your own are magnificent, larger than those which bloom in Manchester chintz above your slumbering brow, 9 inches in diameter. You reach the show; you win every prize, laurels enough to make triumphal arches along all your homeward way. Suddenly a change, a horrible change, comes o'er the spirit of your dream. How the van, in which you are travelling with your Roses, jumps and jolts! how dark the night, and how the thunder rolls! Ah, tout est perdu! Crash fall the horses, or rather the nightmares, down a steep incline, and you find yourself standing, aghast and hopeless, knee-deep in potpourri!

Awaking, for the sixteenth time, with a terrible impression that you have overslept yourself, and that the time for cutting Roses is past, you are comforted in hearing the clock strike two. Another restless hour, and you are up in the grey dawn. At 3.30 you should be among the Roses, never so lovely as now, lifting their heads for the first kisses of the sun, and, alas! for decapitation. See, your gardener is there, keen as yourself. He fills a score of the tubes with pure sweet rainwater; he places them in one of your spare boxes, and is ready to follow, when, having glanced at your programmes, and armed yourself with the trenchant blades, you lead the way to glory and the Roses.

Cut first of all your grandest blooms, because no Mede nor Persian ever made law more unalterable than this, The largest Roses must he placed at the bach, the smallest in the front, and the intermediate in the middle of your boxes. They become by this arrangement so gradually beautifully less that the disparity of size is imperceptible. Transgress this rule, and the result will be disastrous, ludicrous, as when some huge London carriage-horse is put in harness with the paternal cob, or as when some small but ambitious dancer runs round and round the tallest girl at the ball in the gyrations of the mazy waltz. So Triomphe de Rennes in your front row is a beautiful yellow Rose. Placed in juxtaposition to Marechal Niel, its name becomes a cruel joke; your little gem is lost beside the Koh-i-noor, and your bright star pales before the rising sun its ineffectual fire.

You will have another advantage in commencing with your finest flowers, because of these you will have (or ought to have) the larger stock, and will thus be able to lay at the same time and in the same order the foundation of your different collections, using the same corner-stone in each (begin always with some glorious Rose, which must attract the judicial eye, and make an impression upon the judicial heart), and assimilating the arrangement, as long as you possess the material. Much labour, head work and leg work, is saved by this plan of simultaneous structure.

The amateur must net exhibit these larger Roses when they have lost their freshness of colour, or when the petals, opening at the centre, reveal the yellow "eye." He must not place a Rose in his box because it has been superlatively beautiful. In the eyes of her husband, the wife a matron should be lovely as the wife a bride; but the world never saw her in her Honiton veil, and respectfully votes her a trifle passee. At the same time, let not the exhibitor be over-timid, nor discard a Rose which has reached the summit of perfection, and may descend he knows not when, but let him bravely and hopefully set it among its peers. If it suffers from the journey, it must be replaced, of course, from the box of spare blooms, which every exhibitor takes with him; but if it holds its own, let it remain, though you are still anxious concerning it. If it is really a Rose of superior merit, nothing can now happen which will prevent a righteous Rosarian, such as every judge ought to be, from recognising its claims. I once saw, and the recollection makes me shudder still, a senseless censor thrust the end of a huge finger into the heart of a magnificent Due de Rohan, in his anxiety to assure us, his coadjutors, that the Rose was too fully blown.

Oh how I wished that the Due, to whom we voted by a majority the highest marks, had been armed for the moment with a ferret's teeth!

The arrangement of Roses, with regard to their colour, has not been studied as it deserves to be. With some few exceptions, the nurserymen are not successful in this matter; but it is very difficult for them to find the time, granting the taste to be there, for a minute assortment of the large collections which they are called upon to show; and knowing that the awards will be made upon the merits and demerits of the individual flowers, they are not solicitous about minor details. The amateur, with more leisure than the man of business for the study of the beautiful, and for the most effective display of his fewer flowers, ought to excel, but, as a rule, does not. His Roses are very rarely made the most of in this respect, but are frequently marred and spoiled, the colours clashing and contending with each other, instead of combining against their common adversary. It is told of a highly sensitive dame, whose silly pride was in dress, that she went into hysterics before a large party when her great rival in millinery came and sat upon the ottoman beside her, in a grand garment of the same colour as her own, but of a much more brilliant and effective dye; and I have seen many a Rose which would weep, if it could, aromatic rose-water, subdued by a like despair.

Whereas every flower should be so placed as to enhance its neighbours' charms - the fair blonde with her golden locks smiling upon the brunette with her raven hair, each made by the contrast lovelier. Once upon a time six pretty sisters lived at home together always. In looks, in figure, in voice, gait, and apparel, they exactly resembled each other. Young gentlemen, seeing them apart, fell madly in love, as young gentlemen ought to do; but on going to the house, and being introduced to the family, they were bewildered by the exact similitude, didn't know which they had come to see, couldn't think of proposing at random, made blunders, apologies, retreats. It seemed as though all these charming flowers would be left to "wither on the virgin Thorn," when one of them was permitted to leave her home upon a visit to a distant friend. She returned in six weeks, bien fiancee, and six months after was a bride. The rest followed her example. So it is that six scarlet Roses or six pink Roses in close proximity perplex the spectator, and depreciate each other by their monotonous identity; isolated or contrasted, we admire them heartily.