The Cidtimtion of Flowers. 41 



ing in tlie iiiorning sunliglit. In oriental climes the rose is peculiarly 

 odoriferous, aiul yields tlie most fragrant perfumes and costly essential 

 oils. It tigures largely in the language of flowers, and is considered an 

 emblem of Purity and Love. 



'Tis said in Eastern lands, 



They tell their loves with flowers^ 



And Persian maids with tiny hands, 



From 'neath their jessamine bowers : 



While the shades ol' night around them hover, 



Will twine a Rose wreath for her lover. 



The love of a flower garden, it has been said, has a beneficial influence 

 in attaching men to their homes, and on this account every encourage- 

 ment given to increase a taste for Landscape Gardening or Ornamental 

 Planting, is creating an additional security for domestic comfort and hap- 

 piness. Flowers are of all embellishments the most beautiful, and of all 

 created beings, man alone is capable of deriving enjoyment from their 

 growth, and in watching their development. His love for them com- 

 mences in infancy, and remains the delight of youth; it increases with his 

 age, and becomes the sweet amusement of his declining years. The 

 school boy, in care of his little plot of ground, relieves the tedium of his 

 studies, and loses the anxious thoughts of the home he has left in the cul- 

 tivation of flowers. In manhood our attention is generally demanded by 

 the more active duties of life, its more imperious and perhaps less inno- 

 cent occupations, but as age advances, the love of flowers, and the de- 

 lights of their cultivation will return to soothe the later periods of exist- 

 ence. It was the cultivation of flowers and plants, that added pleasure 

 to and soothed the last days of the Empress Josephine ; she Collected 

 together in oue vast conservatory all the rare exotic plants to be obtained 

 and lived as happily as circumstances would admit, among her books, her 

 birds, and her flowers. Madam De Genlis, a celebrated French writer, 

 pronounced watching the growth of plants and flowers and their cultiva- 

 tion, to be one of the most c^elightful occupations the mind could engage 

 in, as recreation from the labor and monotony of study. The poets have 

 given us most luxuriant descriptions of ancient gardens and rural scenery, 

 which have been thought to excel reality ; they have indeed hardly 

 equaled it. Enter a modern garden of flowers for most of the agreeable 

 flowering plants, and consider if anything in the gardens of Alcinious, in 

 the fields of Elysium, or in " Milton's Paradise Lost," can be compared 

 with the intermixture of the Almond, the Lilac, the Rose, Magnolia, Tree 

 Feonia, and a great number of others of less common though of equal 



