TRANSACTIONS OF THE SOCIETY. 109 



husband how " She was bora for a garden ! There's something about it 

 makes one feel so innocent ! My heart always opens and shuts at roses." 



Yet though he might not employ either the language of sentiment, or of 

 science, Mr. Winthrop thanked Heaven that he could feel as deep an ad- 

 miration for the exquisite productions of Horticulture, as if he were an 

 adept in all the processes and technicalities which belonged to it. It was 

 one of the great glories of such an exhibition, that it yielded delight to 

 every eye, and touched a chord in every heart. There was nothing exclu- 

 sive about Nature. She was no respecter of persons. The rose and the 

 honeysuckle smelt as sweet to the village beggar, as they did to Victoria ; 

 and the most scientific cultivator whose name adorned these walls, had no 

 more relish for his luscious clusters, than those of us who hardly knew a 

 Sweetwater from a Black Hamburgh. 



Nor did these exhibitions appeal only to the eye and to the senses. As 

 he was visiting the new and beautiful rooms of the Society this morning, 

 Mr. Winthrop said he could not help recalling some associations of a time, — 

 more years ago than he might care to confess in that presence, — when he 

 was climbing the stairways over that spot upon another errand, and in a 

 different character, — "with satchel and shining morning face, creeping 

 like a snail unwillingly to school." Nor could he forbear regretting at 

 first, that the site should have been diverted from the exalted purpose to 

 which it had been so long devoted. But it needed only for him to enter 

 the hall, and give a moment's time for the moral of the scene to impress 

 itself on his mind, to lose all such regrets ; to feel that the genius of the 

 place had not departed ; that education was still going on there ; education 

 for the heart as well as for the understanding ; a moral education, without 

 which the mere learning of the schools would be hardly better, than the 

 knowledge which our first parents derived from the forbidden tree. 



The day had gone by, (Mr. Winthrop said,) when the dissecting knife of 

 the economist could be permitted to make one of its merciless cuts between 

 utility and beauty. If the progress of invention had taught us to see 

 something of beauty in mere utility, the progress of humanity had taught 

 us, also, to find a great deal of utility in mere beauty. No one, at any 

 rate, would dare to disparage the intrinsic value of beauty, before such an 

 audience as he was then addressing. 



Shakspeare had, indeed, pronounced it to be wasteful and ridiculous ex- 

 cess, "to paint the lily or throw a perfume on the violet." And so it 

 would be. Nature had displayed some master-works, which man could 

 not improve. The violets had been called "sweet as the lids of Juno's 

 eyes, or Cytherea's breath ;" and of the lilies, it had been divinely said, 

 that "Solomon in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these." Both 

 had already a grace beyond the reach of art. But to multiply the varieties 

 of fruit and flowers ; to increase their abundance, and scatter them with a 



