138 ON FLOWERS. 



and below, are deeply draped and festooned with the ivy. 

 There was a pleasant garden, with some very large and fine 

 Pansies, some Roses, and great promise of more. It was ex- 

 tremely neat, clean, and finely kept, and it was the pride of 

 the mistress that she took the entire care of it herself. As we 

 walked, she had her scissors in her hand, and she cut flowers, 

 and when we were seated in a curious little arbor of clipped 

 yew, where she had left her work, when she came in to see 

 us, she arranged little nosegays, and presented them to us." 



Now should we often witness such a scene, and be received 

 and regaled in just such a way, in an American cottage ? There 

 would be the cheerful welcome of the heart, and the bounte- 

 ous hospitality of the freely-spread board, but the " honeysuck- 

 les, and the pansies, and the roses, and the jessamines," would 

 seldom cheer the weary Avanderer's spirit, or beautify the feast. 

 We are so eminently practical and utilitarian, that in the se- 

 vere discipline of the work-a-day-life that we lead, we too much 

 abandon all regard for the beautiful and curious in art. Paint- 

 ing and scul])ture, and the high ministrations of refined and 

 elaborate music, have but little influence upon us, money-lov- 

 ing and intense toilers that we are. Men of the " muck-rake," 

 of whom Bunyan speaks, in that wonderful book, the " Pil- 

 grim's Progress," we seem to " look no way but downwards, 

 raking at the straws and small sticks, and dust of the floor," 

 to turn them into the barter and traffic, and the merchandise, 

 whereby cometh the gold and the silver, and the lucre of gain, 

 the love of which, crowding into and monopolizing all the 

 heart that is in us, crowds out and destroys all love of the 

 beautiful, and almost all love itself, for God and for man. 



Why should we be so exclusively and so extensively practi- 

 cal ? Why should we banish every thing from life, but weary 

 toils and corroding cares? Why take we so much "thought 

 of what we shall eat and what we shall drink, and wherewith- 

 al we shall be clothed," considering so little " the lilies of the 

 field, that toil not, neither do they spin," and yet surpass all 

 the glory and the glitter, and the gorgeousness of great Solo- 

 mon's apparel ! Why should we kill out, by the tiresome op- 

 erativeness of our drudging life, all that is beautiful and poet- 



