THE MATRIMONIAL GARDEN. * 237 



that it is frail in its nature, and liable to be destroyed by 

 every blast, and will demand all your care and attention. 

 Should you witness a blast on its dawning beauties, 

 Oh ! how your fond heart will bleed with tenderness, affec- 

 tion, and sympathy ! The young shoot will naturally twine 

 around all the fibres of your frame. Should it live and 

 ^hrive, spare no pains to "train it up in the way it should 

 go." Weed it, water it, prune it ; it will need all the cul- 

 tivator's skill. Without this, many weeds and baneful 

 plants will grow up with it, and blast your fondest hopes. 

 Be ever mindful that this is a TRUST for which both parties 

 are accountable. 



Without careful cultivation, what can you expect but the 

 most luxuriant growth of unruly appetites, which, in time, 

 will break forth in all manner of disgraceful irregularities 1 

 What, but that ANGER, like a prickly thorn, will arm the 

 temper with an untractable moroseness ? That PEEVISH- 

 NESS, like a stinging nettle, will render the" conversation 

 irksome and forbidding 1 That AVARICE, like some choking 

 weed, will teach the fingers to gripe, and the hands to op- 

 press I That REVENGE, like some poisonous plant, replete 

 with baneful juices, will rankle in the breast, and meditate 

 mischief to its neighbour. While unbridled LUSTS, like 

 swarms of noisome insects, taint each rising thought, and 

 render "every imagination of the heart only evil continu- 

 ally?" Such are the usual products of unrestrained nature ! 

 Such the furniture of the uncultivated mind ! 



By all means, then, pay due attention to culture. By 

 suitable discipline, clear the soil; by careful instruction, 

 implant the seeds of virtue. By skill and vigilance, prune 

 the unprofitable and over-luxuriant branches : " direct the 

 young idea how to shoot," the wayward passions how to 

 move. The mature man will then become the chief orna- 

 ment of the garden. Around him CHARITY will breathe her 

 sweets, and in his branches HOPE expand her blossoms 

 In him the personal virtues will display their graces, and the 

 social ones their fruit the sentiments become generous, 

 the carriage endearing, the life useful, and the end happy 

 and peaceful. 



