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PLEASURES OF GARDENING. 
Gardening, as a recreation, has ranked among its votaries illustrious princes, 
and renowned philosophers, and has ever been the favourite amusement of the 
most eminent and worthy of mankind, whether occupying exalted positions in 
public life, or fulfilling the more retired and unobtrusive duties of a private sphere. 
It is at once a pleasure of the greatest, and a care of the meanest, and indeed, an 
enjoyment and occupation for which no man can be too high or too low. The 
interest which flowers have excited in the breast of man, from the earliest ao-es to 
the present day, has never been restrained to any particular class of society, or 
quarter of the globe. Nature seems to have liberally distributed them over the 
whole w^orld, as precious medicaments for both body and mind, to impart cheerful- 
ness to the earth, and to furnish agreeable sensations to its inhabitants. The 
savage of the forest, in the joy of his heart, binds his brow with the native flowers 
of his romantic haunts, whilst a taste for their cultivation increases in every 
country, in proportion to its advancement in civilization and refinement. Love for 
a garden has a most powerful influence in attracting men to their homes; and on 
this account, every encouragement that is given to promote a taste for ornamental 
gardening, secures an additional guarantee for domestic comfort, and the unity, 
morality, and happiness of the social circle. It is likewise a recreation which 
conduces materially to health, advances intellectual improvement, softens the man- 
ners, and subdues the tempers of men. 
Flowers are of all embellishments the most beautiful, and of all the sentient 
tribes, man alone seems capable of deriving enjoyment from them. The love for 
them commences with infancy, continues unabated throughout the period of adoles- 
cence and youth, increases with our years, and becomes a great and fertile source 
of comfort and gratification in our declining days. The infant no sooner walks, than 
its first employment is to plant a flower in the earth, removing it ten times in a 
day to wherever the sun appears to shine most favourably. The schoolboy in 
the care of his little plot of ground is relieved from his studies, and loses all the 
anxious thoughts and cares of the tasks in which he has been engaged, or the 
home which he may have left. In manhood, our attention is generally demanded 
by more active duties, or by more imperious and perhaps less innocent occupations ; 
still a few hours' employment in gardening aflbrds a delightful recreation, and as age 
obliges us to retire from public life, the attachment to flowers, and the pleasure in 
gardening, return to soothe the latter period of our life. 
In the growth of flowers, from the first tender shoots which rise from the earth, 
through all the changes which they undergo to the period of their utmost perfec- 
tion, man beholds the wonderful process of creative wisdom and power. He 
VOL. v. NO. LV. X 
