236 Remarks on Flower Gardens. 



the thought of the home he has left. In manhood, our attention 

 is generally engaged by more aetive and imperious duties, but 

 as age obliges us to retire from public business, the love of gar- 

 dening returns to soothe our declining years. When the Eastern 

 nations were at the height of their glory, the art of gardening was 

 by them carried to great perfection ; and Cyrus the younger was 

 as celebrated for the pleasure gardens which he had himself 

 planted and cultivated in Lydia, as the elder Cyrus was for the 

 famous palace which he constructed at Persepolis. According 

 to Chardin, the gardens in the vicinity of Babylon abounded 

 with plants and flowers glowing with the most lovely dyes, and 

 conspicuous for their dazzling brilliancy. Of the gardens of the 

 ancient Israelites we have fewer accounts than of those of other 

 Eastern nations, and for the same reason that we have but few, 

 if any, specimens of their sculpture handed down to us. The 

 Hebrew nation being surrounded by idolators on all sides, it was 

 necessary to prohibit, not only all familiar intercourse with the 

 heathens, but to guard particularly against the introduction of 

 their customs and habits, which naturally must have been very 

 alluring and seductive to the idle and more profligate part 

 of the Jewish community ; and as the gardens or sacred 

 groves of those nations were generally the scenes of their 

 obscene revellings, such public plantations, together with the 

 erection of statues and images, were forbidden by the laws of 

 the country. 



The Mahommedan faith teaches the followers of the Prophet to 

 believe that the blessings of a future state consist in dwelling in 

 delightful gardens. The Koran expressly states, " Whosoever 

 doeth good works, either man or woman, and believeth, shall 

 enter into Paradise. They shall enter gardens of pleasure 

 together, with those of their fathers or wives that have done 

 good." 



In the flower garden the student in chemistry will find how 

 imperfect is his art in comparison with natural chemistry, which 

 distils from the earth and conveys by distinct channels in the 

 smallest stem all that is necessary to produce foliage, flowers 

 and fruit, together with color, smell and taste, the most opposite 

 fluids and liquids being separated only by divisions so delicate 

 as scarcely to be deemed a substance. The research into the 

 wonders displayed in vegetation may be entered into without 



