SCULPTURAL DECORATIONS, 
56 
minds : and I think that it is early flowers which const!* 
tute their first natural playthings ; though summer pre- 
sents a greater number and variety, they are not so 
fondly selected. We have our daisies strung and wreathed 
about our dress ; our coronals of orchises and prim- 
roses ; our cowslip balls, &c. ; and one application of 
flowers at this season I have noticed, which, though 
perhaps it is local, yet it has a remarkably pretty effect, 
forming for the time one of the gayest little shrubs that 
can be seen. A small branch or long spray of the 
white-thorn, with all its spines uninjured, is selected ; 
and on these its alternate thorns, a white and a blue 
violet, plucked from their stalks, are stuck upright in 
succession, until the thorns are covered, and when 
placed in a flower-pot of moss, has perfectly the appear- 
ance of a beautiful vernal flowering dwarf shrub, and 
as long as it remains fresh is an object of surprise and 
delight. 
No portion of creation has been resorted to by man- 
kind with more success for the ornament and decoration 
of their labors than the vegetable world. The rites, 
emblems, and mysteries of religion ; national achieve- 
ments, eccentric masks, and the capricious visions of 
fancy, have all been wrought by the hand of the sculp- 
tor, on the temple, the altar, or the tomb ; but plants, 
their foliage, flowers, or fruits, as the most graceful, 
varied, and pleasing objects that meet our view, have 
been more universally the object of design, and have 
supplied the most beautiful, and perhaps the earliest, 
embellishments of art. The pomegranate, the almond, 
and flowers, were selected, even in the wilderness, by 
divine appointment, to give form to the sacred utensils; 
the rewards of merit, the wreath of the victor, were ar- 
boraceous ; in later periods, the acanthus, the ivy, the 
lotus, the vine, the palm, and the oak, flourished under 
the chisel, or in the loom of the artist 4 ; and in modem 
days, the vegetable world affords the almost exclusive 
decorations of ingenuity and art- The cultivation of 
flowers is of all the amusements of mankind the one to 
be selected and approved as the most innocent in itself, 
and most perfectly devoid of injury or annoyance to 
