dear!" and "Get out of the house, you
great lazy-bones!" are the short, quick,
snappish words of command given, at the
briefest intervals, to swarms of seedlings, to
crowds of cuttings, to calceolarias comfortably
settling themselves in thumb-pots; to tiny
bits of heath just beginning to feel
themselves at home; to the whole overpowering
army of individuals who appear in the annual
catalogues. Truly, a nurseryman's establishment
is not a palace, but a caravanserai;
you call to-morrow to admire what charmed
you yesterday, and its place is nowhere to be
found.

And yet there exist remarkable exceptions
which prove that even nurserymen have
human hearts. In many nurseries you will
find one or two plants which are not to be
parted with for love or money. They are
original specimens—show-plants—imported,
or raised on the spot,—heir-looms that have
displayed their blossoms (or perhaps only
promised them) to grandfather, father, son,
and grandson. They represent, in sap and
stem, instead of in flesh and blood, the old
white-haired retainers of an ancient family,
or such venerable fourfooted pensioners as
the Duke's Waterloo charger, Sir Walter
Scott's staghound, or Cowper's last surviving
hare. Every labourer employed in a nursery
knows and reverences the privileged plant,
should there be one. If he does not exactly
take off his hat to it, he gazes and keeps at a
respectful distance when it bedecks itself in
its annual robe of beauty. Aged and
ancestral specimens like these look down upon
the successive races of ephemeral bedders
and window-plants with much the same sort
of air as the pyramids of Egypt regard French
invaders, Mameluke defenders, or English
overland travellers to Bengal. Amongst
such time-honoured family-historical plants,
may be named the George the Fourth rose at
Sawbridgeworth, which Mr. Rivers found
more than thirty years ago, one morning in
June, when looking over the first bed of
roses he ever raised from seed, on which plant
he set his mark, and found afterwards that it
completely eclipsed all the dark roses known.
Of such, in still a higher degree—although
not apparently a very remarkable specimen
—is a Chinese tree-pæony which grows at
the end of one of the houses in Kew Gardens.
It is the original plant of the showy and
delicate Moutan, introduced by Sir Joseph
Banks, and the grandmother, or great-great-
grandmother, of most of the Moutans that
have fixed their quarters in European
gardens. It merits a pilgrimage from the
nurserymen themselves, having been the
means of putting something like a hundred
thousand pounds into their united pockets.
At V. H.'s I inquired after the plants that
had retired with a pension out of his civil
list, and found NONE actually recognised as
permanent residents; though I hope, and
believe, that a few, at least, will contrive to
insert their roots so deep as to be past the
possibility of extraction.

"Where's your Victoria-regia?" I asked.

"Oh, everything in this world wears up.
It began to get a little stale, so we turned its
tank into an orchid-and-palm-house."

"You will surely keep that handsome pair
of American aloes?" I could not help
observing.

"Yes," answered V. H., hesitatingly, "perhaps.
Yes, I shall keep them, But one day,
some magnificent Boyard will come with an
amiable countenance, begging me to let him
have them; and then they will go."

"And the two young Wellingtonias that
are so nicely established, and which will be
such gigantic fellows one of these days,—
overtopping St. Bavon's steeple possibly:
you won't part with them?"

"I don't know—no—perhaps."

"But do you retain for yourself absolutely
none of all the beautiful things that pass
through your hands?"

"My dear sir, when I lived at Rio Janeiro,
I occasionally saw sales of slaves. Sisters
were sometimes sold to separate masters:
one went north, the other went south. Then
they said to each other, 'Adieu, Katerina!
Adieu, Maria! The time is come: we must
part. Adieu!' Exactly so, my plants are
my slaves. I am obliged to be hard-hearted.
When their time is come, I must pitilessly
say 'Adieu!' to them, as they must to me,
and to each other."

Notwithstanding which profession of
callousness, it is possible that a long respite
may yet be accorded to a Thuja aurea, to a
Moutan pæony on the lawn, and to one or two
choice conifers besides. I shall feel personal
regret if any covetous evil eye causes the
displacement of a double, or rather a hose-in-hose
lilac, at the entrance; and it will be
impossible to disturb a Pinus Pinsapo, from
the Tierra Nievada, in Spain, planted the
day when V. H.'s boy learned his first lessons,
to test by its thriftiness how he got on. I
am happy to report that both the youngster
and the pine-tree give their friends every
reason to be satisfied with their progress.

Many are the curiosities and beauties, old
and new, contained in the various hot and
greenhouses, as well as between the verdant
screens. A blue hydrangia has small, delicate
fertile flowers hidden beneath the broad,
flat, sterile ones, as sultanas of the seraglio
are carefully concealed by their fat and beardless
overseers. What a beautifully straight
and polished shaft is that shot up by the
Lilium giganteum, to display a bunch of
amaryllis-like blossoms at the altitude of
twelve or fifteen feet! It is a vegetable sky-
rocket solidified and rooted to the ground. I
know of no flower, not even the tuberose or
the pyramidal campanula, so well adapted for
combination with architectural forms as this,
Fancy an entrance hall, or a colonnaded
passage, with marble pillars; and in front of