STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 135 



" The influence of gardening," says Miss Cooper, in Rural Hours, "is a civilizing and 

 Improving occupation in Itself; its influences are all beneficial ; it usually makes a per- 

 son more amiable, and more industrious. Persuade a careless, indolenl man to take an 

 interest in his garden, and his reformation has begun. Lei an Idle woman honestly 

 watch over her own (lower-beds, and she will naturally become more active. There la 

 always work to be done In a garden ; Borne little job to be added to yesterday's task, 

 -without which it is Incomplete; books may i>e closed with a mark where we left off; 

 needle work may be thrown aside, and resumed again ; a sketch may be left half finished, 

 a piece of music half practised ; even household matters may relax in some measure for 

 awhile; but regularity and method are constantly required — are absolutely indispens- 

 able to the well-being of a garden. The occupation itself is so engaging, that one 

 commences readily, and the interest increases so naturally, that no great share of per- 

 severance is meded to continue the employment, and thus labor becomes a pleasure, and 

 the dangerous habit of idleness is cheeked. Of all faults of character, there is not one, 

 perhaps, depending so entirely upon habit as indolence, and nowhere can one learn a 

 lesson of order and diligence more prettily and more pleasantly than from a flower 

 garden." 



Among the heathen matrons, as far back as the Phoenicians and Sabines, before the 

 founding of Rome, flowers held an important part in their religious ceremonies. The 

 Romans instituted a festival in honor of Flora, as early as the time of Romulus, as a 

 kind of rejoicing at the appearance of the blossoms, which they welcomed as the har- 

 binger of spring. The poet Cowper says : 



" The spleen is seldom felt where Flora reigns, 

 The low'ring eye, the petulance, the frown, 

 \nd sullen easiness that o'reshades, distorts 

 And mars the face of beauty, when no cause 

 For such immeasurable woe appears ; 

 These Flora banishes, and gives the fair 

 Sweet smiles and bloom less transient than her own." 



Among the Romans, the bride wore a garland of dowers on the head. Even at the 

 present day in the old countries, it is quite customary to strew flowers in the path of 

 the bride. On festal occasions they are alsousel to decorate churches, and to those 

 ■who condemn this practice as unchristian-like, we would say in the words of Bishop 

 Heber, "If this be heathenish, heaven help the wicked." By the ancients, beauty 

 and divinity were alike crowned with flowers; the objects of their earthly love and 

 Unearthly devotion. They equally graced the altar and the domestic hearth ; the tem- 

 ple, the palace, and the cottage. And even down to the present day, wherever shrines 

 are set up, a risible manifestation of holy things and invisible, there do wreathes and 

 garlands of flowers continue to be suspended. 



Let db deal gently and considerately with this tendency to the beautiful. The Deeds 

 of life are so urgent among us, and the claims of society so heavy. Let our youl b sing 

 if they will, and our maidens, like the sweet Pcrdita and the gentle Ophelia, give 

 flowers to be " worn with a difference." Let them try love auguries with the petals of 

 the rose, or the down of the dandelion, as they did long ago before Goethe had made 

 the text full of pathos and beauty by the fate of the simple Margery. 



Let the trefoil indicate the cross, or be suspended over the lintel, to point out the 



