will stimulate us to further exertion, and the advantages which 
have lately presented themselves, through an extended connex- 
ion, place us in a position to promise additional interest in the 
Botanic Garden. The spirit of the times too, greatly assists the 
Engines of literature. We have railways herein as well as in 
travelling. It has been said by an ingenious French writer, 
that all that is permitted to us of intercourse in this transitory 
scene is merely to grasp our friends by the hand, then pass on, 
and meet no more till we have crossed the vast ocean that di- 
vides time from eternity. Happier is our lot, for by means of 
the Botanic Garden we become more than the hundred-handed 
Briareus, capable of holding communication with thousands of 
our friends at once, however distant or scattered their places of 
abode. Conscious of the responsibility thus attached to us, 
we aim at rendering the plants we figure, floral preceptors — 
the means of introducing to our distant correspondents principles 
and views, which whilst they render us happier here will be no 
unfit companions when we go hence, and are planted in the 
garden of “ living fountains of waters.” 
Though not averse occasionally to adopt the sentiment of the 
poet, in its cheerful application, who advises us in our journey 
through life’s garden to 
“Gather the rose-buds while we may, 
Old Time is still a-flying; 
And that same flower which blooms to-day, 
To-morrow may be dying;” 
yet ’twere well to have respect to the moral so regularly and 
touchingly taught by the beautiful objects of which we treat, 
—to look on their renovation after lying in cold obstruction, 
and permit them to become our serious monitors, then take 
up one strain of nature’s sweetest poetess. 
“ Bring flowers to the shrine where we kneel in prayer. 
They are nature's offering; their place is there; 
They speak of hope to the fainting heart; 
"With a voice of promise they come and part ; 
They sleep in death through the wintry hours ; 
They break forth In glory : bring flowers, bright flowers !” 
Mks. Hemans. 
