THE CULTURE OF FLOWERS. BOTANY. 405 



For my own part, I look upon all these establishments as one 

 great branch of public education. Men are not instructed merely 

 by books and masters, by schools and set lessons, but by every 

 thing which meets the eye and the ear, and especially all which 

 meets the eye and the ear directly, without the intervention of 

 any other agent. Few persons, in even the humblest condition 

 of life, can range through a fine and extensive botanical garden, 

 or through a museum of natural history in any of its forms, 

 without gathering much useful instruction ; but especially with 

 out having their curiosity excited, some thirst for knowledge 

 awakened and stimulated. This being once put upon the scent, 

 will often pursue the chase with interest and pleasure, and as 

 often with eminent success. What is more gratifying to our 

 self-love than any triumph in such case ? and what pleasure is 

 more innocent, more pure, and more intense oftentimes, than the 

 pleasure, under such circumstances, of acquiring knowledge ? 

 Compare with such gratifications the purely sensual pleasures and 

 low indulgences which engage a large portion of mankind, how 

 infinitely do they transcend them ! The one transient and per 

 ishable, always stimulating to excess, and that excess always 

 pernicious, exhausting to the animal vigor, ruinous to health, and 

 but too often the blighting, the degradation, and the ruin of the 

 whole mind. Not so with the pleasures of refined taste, of intel 

 lectual progress and attainment. The more knowledge is ac 

 quired, the more the capacity and facilities of knowledge are 

 increased. The more the mind is exercised, the stronger it 

 becomes. The more the taste for intellectual pleasures is culti 

 vated, the less likely is man to become the slave of his lower 

 appetites and passions. Then, what a great gain will it always 

 prove to the laboring classes, if labor can be something more 

 than mere mechanical drudgery and toil ! What a gain it must 

 be, if, in the midst of almost unremitted labor, requiring only a 

 mechanical dexterity, which practice soon renders easy, there are 

 resources within to alleviate this monotony of toil, or rather to 

 make us less sensible to it ; and if, in the intervals of labor, the 

 mind finds means of recreation, intellectual, alluring, delightful 

 recreation, which draw it away from all painful reflections upon 

 what most persons will consider the hardships of a life of con 

 stant toil! 



I am most anxious that in cities and in the country much 



