if their spring blossom-buds were suffered to
be destroyed, by neglecting to rescue them
from the onslaught of grubs, as often
happened, there was an end of roses till the
following year. Except in the case of the
semi-double Portland or PÅ“stan rose, autumnal
roses were unlooked for accidents, produced
by the brutal pruning of some drunken
gardener's labourer, or by a September
thunderstorm at the end of a long summer's
drought. Then came the charming monthly
or China-rose; but it was suffered, for years
and years, to decorate the cottage porch
unimproved. Afterwards arrived the crimson
and the white Chinas, the first Noisette from
America, the Ile de Bourbon, and the original
and the yellow tea-roses. And then gardeners
set to work in earnest. They remembered
the advance made by that great benefactor
of his country. Thomas Andrew Knight, and
they carried out his principles and his
practice of skilful hybridisation. The result is
that roses are a never-ending gratification. It
is possible to have roses in bloom very nearly
—if not quite—all the year round. Even such
classes as the moss, which obstinately adhered
to their orthodox season, have at least been
persuaded to become perpetual. There are
moss-roses—white, red, and blush,—which
continue to flower till the end of summer.
The rose now says to her master in a tone
which challenges him to do his best, " Do you
supply me with manure and culture, with
kind attention to my whims and fancies, with
sunshine and shade at the times when I want
them, with a friendly humouring of my
natural habits, and I, growing in the open air,
will supply you with abundant bouquets
from June till October; later perhaps.
Perhaps, even on Christmas Day, you shall have
a few blooms to mingle with your holly and
your laurustinus."

Well, what we now want is a set of
perpetual strawberries which shall make as
generous a return for liberal treatment as
the Géant des Batailles or the Queen of the
Bourbons. The project is perfectly feasible.
It will take time, certainly; it cannot be
completely carried out by one single head
and one pair of hands; but it may, and it
will be effected, for we already possess the
elementary materials; and we know not what
further helps may turn up, either at home in
the course of the attempt, or abroad in
countries yet unexplored, as China, Japan, the
Himalayas, and North- Western America, all
which regions promise well. Several
perpetual strawberries are already in existence,
though greatly neglected in England of late
years; they are stuck into some odd corner,
as merely fit to amuse holiday-children with
a surprise of autumnal fruit, or they are
consigned to the obscurity of old farm-
gardens, tenantless mansions, and remote
parsonages, where they form part of a collection
of rarities. But they have the grand
merit of producing a succession of flowers and
fruit; all that is required is to combine this
valuable faculty with the merits for which
modern varieties are esteemed. The first
results may not be perfect; the change,
therefore, will have to be made by passing
through several steps. There are the Black
Prince and the Princess Royal to give
earliness; the first also has a great tendency
to throw out a second crop when
circumstances favour, as when the plants have been
forced for a first crop and then turned out
into the open ground. Keen's Seedling and
the British Queen will induce in their
progeny abundant bearing. Fine flavour will
come from the Downton, Myatt's Elisa, the
old Caroline, and some of the hautbois.
Kitley's Goliath and Wilmot's Superb will
contribute size; and the new Californian
arrival will prolong the season far beyond its.
present limit. In short, when a garden can
show its beds of strawberries, of different
kinds, but all agreeing in the novel
characteristic of bearing, from some time in June
till some time in October, an abundance of
fruit of various types, but all handsome, all
well-flavoured, of good size, and in never-failing
succession,—such a garden will indeed be
a pleasure-ground.

Fancy these perpetual strawberries, ye
contented ghosts of our ancient British,
ancestors; ye, who, in your barbarism,
thought a handful of seedy wood-strawberries
very fine eating! The idea of a New
Perpetual Elton always at hand to pluck, at
the same time luscious, piquant, and bulky,
throughout all the heats of haysill and
harvest, through the London season, the
bathing season, and the shooting season,—it
is enough to make your venerable mouths
water in your mysterious graves.

INFAMOUS MR. FULLER.

ENGLISHMEN who hear of treasons and
conspiracies abroad; of societies of the Marianne
and societies of the tenth of December; of
midnight visits from gendarmes or Italian
sbirri; of sudden discoveries of muskets or
grenades in mouldy cellars or poverty-
stricken garrets; of police spies in white
neckcloths and glazed boots, mingling in
private soirées, and looking stray nods or
shrugs, or half-heard whispers; of warrants
of banishment from the préfet under lois de
suspects, of secret denunciations and mysterious
disappearances of incautious talkers—
even Englishmen who have lived amid these
things, and got away (as wise men do) as soon
as they can, would have some difficulty in
imagining the enactment of such scenes at
home. Something like them, however, has
been seen, even in England before now—times
of plots and conspiracies, and distrust, when
no man's life or property was safe. It is
not without its uses, at this time, to go back
and regard some of the features of such
periods in the under-currents of their history.