1852.] THE PHILADELPHIA FLORIST. 23 



^manifested too to have freely published the April Report of the Penn.^A 

 J Horticultural Society, kindly placed at our disposal by Thomas P. q7 



James, Esq., for whose kindness we have to acknowledge our especial \ 

 obligations. 



An issue like our own has been long talked of: There seemed to 

 be a doubt among its best friends whether it would have any better 

 than a conversational existence. It was time to hazard something — 

 And so, Gentlemen, Ladies, Editors, Amateurs, Gardeners, and Mem- 

 bers of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and Gardeners Union, 

 the Philadelphia Florist makes you its bow, promises to do its best 

 hereafter, and asks you kindly to acknowledge its first appearance. 



We have a few words to say in answer to the members of the gar- 

 dening craft. They have asked many questions with regard to our 

 motives and plan of proceeding — who was to conduct this Journal — 

 who would support it \ Talked of other failures of swindling pro- 

 jects practised upon them. These questions we had every reason 

 to suppose would be proposed ; we shall best reply to them by acts. 

 We thank them for their careful solicitude for our personal safety 

 and their own. To those who proposed no difficult and chilling en- 

 quiries, but went with us cordially, we tender our thanks, and respect 

 those close and calculating men no less, who form the ribwork of civil 

 society, by binding in certain form the swaying intellects of the san- 

 guine and enthusiastic. u Without a little enthusiasm," said a learn- 

 ed divine in our hearing, " the world would stand still ;" yet we ad- 

 mire those most whose enthusiasm in such an undertaking as the pre- 

 sent is manifested in something beyond mere words; or do not the 

 very enthusiasts talk away their enthusiasm 1 We hope not. We 

 shall see. Our reasons for commencing a new speculation amongst so 

 many older and abler speculators are simply these. We do speculate 

 upon procuring circulation for another Journal devoted to the sublime 

 and beautiful, even in Philadelphia, a mercantile city, where money 

 and stocks rule the roast — where gardening, gardeners and gardens are 

 but called into requisition to trifle away a leisure hour, and Horticul- 

 ture and Botany terms not well understood — where it is supposed 

 the Philadelphia Florist and Horticultural Journal will prove 

 an ephemera or a nonentity, and its ardent originators and kind pro- 

 moters but idle dreamers. We speculate however on far different re- 

 sults — upon the discrimination of a scientific public ; upon the intel- 

 lectuality of Americans as representatives of true republican institu- 

 tions ; upon the good morals of the gardeners of this vicinity ; on the 

 refinement and skill of our citizens ; on their love of the beautiful in 

 nature, for nature swells with beauty ,* and on the passion for novelty, 

 f*>' not least in the list of items which we have just run over. 



i !9V -*<r$m 



