LETTER XXVI. 



from which you might proceed as much further in 

 the pursuit of this pleasing science as taste or oppor- 

 tunity might lead you. I had no expectation that 

 my letters would form even an epitome of the most 

 common facts. They were merely intended as an ex- 

 periment upon the possibility of conveying strictly 

 scientific knowledge in a simple and amusing form, 

 and of showing that Botany is by no means that dry, 

 difficult, repulsive subject, which it may well appear 

 to those who only know it through the uninviting 

 medium of systematic works. I thought it practi- 

 cable, without at all deserting science, to divest her 

 of the severe, forbidding features that she puts on 

 when dressed in the starched, old-fashioned, matter-of- 

 fact costume of the schools, and to shew that it is 

 in her wild and unsophisticated state that she shines 

 forth in all her smiles and loveliness, when her flowers 

 are newly gathered, their colours fresh, and their 

 fragrance unimpaired, and not when every thing is 

 dry and withered, and formally labelled with the 

 Greek and Latin names of science. I was, moreover, 

 anxious that the endless variety of beautiful objects 

 which the Vegetable world so prodigally strews before 

 our path should, with those who from their habits 

 of life and their gentler feelings are the most sensible 

 to the charms of nature, become something bevond 

 a vague sentiment of undefined admiration. The 

 love for flowers is a holy feeling, inseparable from 

 our very nature ; it exists alike in savage and civilized 

 society ; it speaks with the same powerful voice to the 

 great and wealthy and to the poor and lowly ; it 



