56 SCULPTURAL DECORATIONS. 



minds: and I think that it is early flowers which consti* 

 tute their first natural playthings; though summer pre- 

 sents a greater number and variety, they are not so 

 fondly selected. We have our daisies strung and wreathed 

 about our dress ; our coronals of orchises and prim- 

 roses; our cowslip balls, &c. ; and one application of 

 flowers at this season I have noticed, which, though 

 perhaps it is local, yet it has a remarkably pretty effect, 

 forming for the time one of the gayest little shrubs that 

 can be seen. A small branch or long spray of the 

 white-thorn, with all its spines uninjured, is selected ; 

 and on these its alternate thorns, a white and a blue 

 violet, plucked from their stalks, are stuck upright in 

 succession, until the thorns are covered, and when 

 placed in a flower-pot of moss, has perfectly the appear- 

 ance of a beautiful vernal flowering dwarf shrub, and 

 as long as it remains fresh is an object of surprise and 

 delight. 



No portion of creation has been resorted to by man- 

 kind with more success for the ornament and decoration 

 of their labors than the vegetable world. The rites, 

 emblems, and mysteries of religion ; national achieve- 

 ments, eccentric masks, and the capricious visions of 

 fancy, have all been wrought by the hand of the sculp 

 tor, on the temple, the altar, or the tomb ; but plants, 

 their foliage, flowers, or fruits, as the most graceful, 

 varied, and pleasing objects that meet our view, have 

 been more 'universally the object of design, and have 

 supplied the most beautiful, and perhaps the earliest, 

 embellishments of art. The pomegranate, the almond, 

 and flowers, were selected, even in the wilderness, by 

 divine appointment, to give form to the sacred utensils; 

 the rewards of merit, the wreath of the victor, were ar- 

 boraceous ; in later periods, the acanthus, the ivy, the 

 lotus, the vine, the palm, and the oak, flourished under 

 the chisel, or in the loom of the artist; and in modern 

 days, the vegetable world affords the almost exclusive 

 decorations of ingenuity and art. The cultivation of 

 flowers is of all the amusements of mankind the one to 

 be selected and approved as the most innocent in itself, 

 and most perfectly devoid pf injury or annoyance to 



