272 The Sermon of tJie I^lowers. 



the Valley, a blush-colored Rose bud, and the same shade of Hyacinth pips, with a 

 little Fern worked through it, which was a very neat-looking little bouquet ; another 

 consisted of a spray of Lily of the Valley, a yellow Rose bud, and a few pips of rich 

 purple Cineraria, which came out well against the deep color of the Marechal Niel 

 bud. 1 could give descriptions of many others, but think that those which I have 

 mentioned will suffice to show the best shape and style in which such bouquets should 

 be made. — X. H., in the Garden. 



The Sermon of the Flowers. 



tExtract from an atklress on Oruamentatioa of Gronuds, delivered before 111. State Horticultural Society, 



by Dr. J. M. Gregory.] 



FORTUNATELY in our land adornment, the number of available objects in which 

 this element of beauty resides, is almost endless. The land itself, smoothed into 

 the level lawn, swelling into soft undulation, or cut into terraces in a thousand com- 

 binations, flecked with shadows or sleeping in the pale or ruddy light is perpetually 

 beautiful. The myriad forms of plant life, from the delicate mosses that deck the 

 rugged rock as if to help it too, to look beautiful, and the little grasses, making in 

 their very multitude the royal holiday attire of our good mother Earth, to the stately 

 pine and the grand oak, uniting in their outlines and foliage every conceivable line 

 of grace, and mingling every hue and tint of beautiful colors. All these oti'er ready 

 to our hand a practical infinitude of beauty for our landscape work. 



And the flowers, those reminiscences of EJen and prophecies of Heaven, the 

 splendid children of the sun and the jewelry of the soil, what shall I say of them ? 

 Beautiful in form, beautiful in color, beautiful in arrangement, infinite in variety, 

 endless in profusion, decking without reluctance the poor man's cot, briglitening 

 without pride the rich man's home, blooming with wild content in lonely forest glades 

 and on the unvisited mountain sides, blazing witiiout ambition in the public parks, 

 sheddinf their fragrance without anxiousness in the chamber of sickness, cheering 

 without reproach the poor wretch in prison cell, blushing in the hair of virtuous 

 beauty and shedding without blush their beautiful light on the brow of her fallen 

 sister, sleeping in the cradle with the innocent life of infancy, and blooming still in 

 the coffin with the cold clay that remains after that life is spent, scattering their 

 prophetic bloom through orchards and fields where robust industry prepares its victo- 

 ries, and lighting up the graveyards with their still undismayed promises, scorning 

 no surroundings however humble or however sinful, flinging beauty in the wild wan- 

 tonness of infinite abundance on the most precious and the most worthless things, they 

 are God's incarnated smiles shed forth with a love that frightens our poor justice out 

 of its wits, and with an infinite justice that puts our uttermost love to the blush, 

 teaching us a theology better than the creeds, and a science better than the schools ; 

 at once mocking and stimulating our acts, kissing us when we fall, but refusing to let 

 us lie quiet in our prostration, and perpetually urging upon the great heart of human- 

 ity, by their myriad and unending illustrations, the lesson of infinite trust in that 

 divine Fatherhood which gives their splendor to the lilies and tells us that " Solomon 

 in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." 



