you to note the way he has treated the rose, for instance: the rose
has been grown double from I don't know when; the double rose was a
gain to the world, a new beauty was given us by it, and nothing
taken away, since the wild rose grows in every hedge. Yet even then
one might be excused for thinking that the wild rose was scarce
improved on, for nothing can be more beautiful in general growth or
in detail than a wayside bush of it, nor can any scent be as sweet
and pure as its scent. Nevertheless the garden rose had a new
beauty of abundant form, while its leaves had not lost the
wonderfully delicate texture of the wild one. The full colour it
had gained, from the blush rose to the damask, was pure and true
amidst all its added force, and though its scent had certainly lost
some of the sweetness of the eglantine, it was fresh still, as well
as so abundantly rich. Well, all that lasted till quite our own
day, when the florists fell upon the rose--men who could never have
enough--they strove for size and got it, a fine specimen of a
florist's rose being about as big as a moderate Savoy cabbage. They
tried for strong scent and got it--till a florist's rose has not
unseldom a suspicion of the scent of the aforesaid cabbage--not at
its best. They tried for strong colour and got it, strong and bad--
like a conqueror. But all this while they missed the very essence
of the rose's being; they thought there was nothing in it but
redundance and luxury; they exaggerated these into coarseness, while
they threw away the exquisite subtilty of form, delicacy of texture,
and sweetness of colour, which, blent with the richness which the
true garden rose shares with many other flowers, yet makes it the
queen of them all--the flower of flowers. Indeed, the worst of this
is that these sham roses are driving the real ones out of existence.
If we do not look to it our descendants will know nothing of the
cabbage rose, the loveliest in form of all, or the blush rose with