THE UTILITY OF FLOWERS. 15 



pleased ?' What pleasures more pure, more warming to 

 the heart, more improving to the mind, more chastening to 

 the affections, than those which come through the eye! 

 Where are more luminously displayed the perfections of 

 the Creator, than in the star spangled heavens above, and 

 the floAver spangled earth beneath? 



" Your voiceless lips, oh flowers, are living preachers, 

 Each cup a pulpit, and each leaf a book. 

 Supplying to my fancy numerous teachers 



From the loneliest nook."— /Horace Smith. 



Nonsense, — sheer nonsense to tell us it is useless to 

 cultivate flowers. They add to the charms of our homes, 

 rendering them more attractive and beautiful, and they 

 multiply and strengthen the domestic ties which bind us to 

 them. We would not advocate the cultivation of flowers 

 to the neglect of more necessary objects. Attending to 

 the one, does not involve neglect of the other. Every 

 man engaged in the culture of the earth, can find time to 

 embelhsh his premises who has the will to do it, and we pity 

 the family of the man who has not. " Rob the earth of 

 its flowers, the wondrous mechanism of the Almighty, 

 and we should lose the choicest mementos left us that 

 it was once a paradise." 



" Ye bright Mosaics I that with storied beauty 

 The floor of nature's temple tesselate, 

 What numerous emblems of instructive duty 



Your forms create.— //orace Smith. 



" We have no sympathy with those, who would dese- 

 crate and pare down the loveliness of earth to the grade 

 of mere utility — who can discover no beauty in the open- 

 ing bud and blushing flower, and whose exertions are 

 limited on all occasions by a parsimonious idolatry and 

 worse than idiotic privation of sensibility to the madden- 

 ing love of Gold." The love of flowers is a sentiment 

 common alike to the great and little ; to the old and young ; 



