6 
F REF ACE 
We will not, upon a subject so varied, parade our 
learning by telling our fair readers what fine things Pliny 
has said upon it ; or, with the spirit of prosing upon us, 
write a crabbed treatise upon the Egyptian hieroglyphics. 
We will even spare them a dissertation upon the floral 
alphabet of the effeminate Chinese; they had, and have, 
their flowers and their feelings, their emblems and their 
ecstasies. Let them enjoy them. 
We shall do no more than rove through the European 
garden, to cull from it its beauties, to arrange them into 
odoriferous eloquence, and teach our refined and purifying 
science to those fair beings. The symbols of whose mortal 
beauty are but inadequately found in the most glorious 
flowers, and of whom the mental charms can be typified, 
only when we shall have reached those courts where the 
spring is eternal and the idea of decay unknown. 
But little study will be requisite for the science which 
we teach. Nature has been before us. We must, how- 
ever, premise two or three rules. When a flower is pre- 
sented in its natural position, the sentiment is to be under- 
stood affirmatively; when reversed, negatively. For in- 
stance, a rose-bud, with its leaves and thorns, indicates 
fear with hope ; but if reversed, it must be construed as 
saying, “You may neither fear nor hope.'' Again, divest 
the same rose-bud of its thorns, and it permits the most 
sanguine hope; deprive it of its petals and retain the 
thorns, and the worst fears are to be apprehended. The 
expression of every flower may be thus varied by varying 
its state or position. The Marygold is emblematical of 
pain; place it on the head, and it signifies trouble of 
mind ; on the heart, the pangs of love ; on the bosom, the 
disgusts of “ennui.” The pronoun / is expressed by 
inclining the symbol to the right, and the pronoun thou 
by inclining it to the left. 
These are a few of the rudiments of our significant 
language. We call upon Friendship and Love to unite 
their discoveries to ours; for it is in the power only of 
these sweetest sentiments of our nature to bring to perfec- 
tion what they have so beautifully invented, the mystical 
yet pleasing links of intelligence that bind soul to soul, 
in the tender and quiet harmony of the one, or in the 
more impassioned felicity of the other. 
