THE CULTURE OF FLOWERS. BOTANY. 403 



incurred, in providing rational and wholesome pleasures and rec 

 reations for the poorer, arid especially the laboring, classes of the 

 community. The rich can always find for themselves the 

 means of pleasure and enjoyment. If they do not exist near 

 home, they can seek them abroad ; and they are often so crowded 

 and surfeited with them, that enjoyment itself becomes almost a 

 toil. It is wholly different with the poor and the laboring 

 classes. They are ordinarily fixed in their residence, and have 

 little power of locomotion ; their lives are commonly passed in 

 almost unceasing labor; their residences in general, in cities, are 

 in the compact and most crowded quarters, where ventilation is 

 imperfect, and where the cheerful and invigorating light of the 

 sun is often shut out, and where, consequently, strength is more 

 rapidly exhausted ; diseases are engendered ; the comfort of liv 

 ing is not known ; life itself is abridged ; the decencies of 

 life are forgotten or trampled upon ; moral disease and crime 

 follow in the rear of physical suffering and privation j and a 

 gangrene appears upon the social body, spreading through all 

 the circulations its disastrous influences. Every effort should be 

 made, and all pains should be taken, that these labors may be 

 relaxed j and that some innocent and wholesome recreation 

 should be provided for these children of severe and almost un 

 ceasing toil. Public gardens, and shaded and ornamental grounds, 

 should be established, and every effort be made to render them 

 accessible and attractive. These people are almost in danger of 

 forgetting that there are green fields, and blue skies, and trees 

 which offer a refreshing shade, and flowers which combine the 

 most delicious perfumes with the richest beauties of form and 

 coloring, and warm suns, and glittering stars, and floating 

 clouds of every form and hue, which, in their expansive folds, 

 and in their brilliant and gorgeous coloring, seem the fit emblems 

 of that abyss of glory, where the Divine Majesty has fixed his 

 throne, and into which human presumption has not dared to 

 penetrate. I would do all that can be done to bring these peo 

 ple &quot; out of darkness into this marvellous light.&quot; 



The recreations of the laboring and poorer classes, especially 

 in cities, are generally of the lowest character. This is particu 

 larly the case in England, where large numbers of the laboring 

 population, either in the town or its neighborhood, give them 

 selves up to gross excess. In many of the mechanical trades, 



