9 
Every plant is formed so as to excite attention, and afford matter of as¬ 
tonishment and instruction; but some flowers in a more particular manner 
claim our consideration., There is scarcely a single object in all the vegetable 
world in which so many agreeable qualities are combined as in the queen of 
flowers, the rose. Nature certainly meant to regale the senses of her favou¬ 
rite with an object which presents to him at once freshness, fragrancy, colour, 
and shape. The very soul seems to be refreshed on the bare recollection of 
the pleasure which the senses receive in contemplating, in a fine vernal morn- 
ing, the charms of the pink, the violet, the honeysuckle, the hyacinth, the 
narcissus, the jonquil, the rocket, the tulip, and a thousand others, in every 
variety of figure, scent, and hue; for nature is no less remarkable for the ac¬ 
curacy and beauty of her works, than for variety and profusion. Defects 
are always discovered in works of art when they are examined by a micro¬ 
scope; but a close examination of a leaf of a flower is like taking off a veil 
from the face of a beauty. The finest needle ever polished, and pointed by 
the most ingenious artist, appears, when it is viewed by the solar microscope, 
quite obtuse; while the sting of a bee, however magnified, still retains all 
its original acuteness of termination. The serrated border of the petal of a 
flower, and the fringe on the wing of a fly, display an accuracy of delineation 
which no person ever yet could rival. The taste of the florist has not, indeed, 
been much admired, or generally aspired at; while that of the connoisseur in 
painting is considered as a mark of elegance of character, and an honourable 
distinction. Yet, surely, it is an inconsitency to be transported with the 
workmanship of a poor mortal, and feel no raptures in surveying those highly 
finished pictures in which it is easy to trace the finger of the Deity. 
The poets have given us most luxuriant descriptions of gardens and of 
rural scenery; and though they are thought by some to have exceeded 
reality, they have indeed scarcely equalled it. Enter only into a modern 
shrubbery, formed of a selection of the most agreeable flowering shrubs, and 
consider, whether there is any thing in the garden of Alcinous, in the fields 
of Elysium, in Milton’s Paradise, to be compared with the intermixture of 
the lime, the syringa, the laburnum, the double-blossomed cherry, peach, 
and almond; the robinia, the jessamine, the moss-rose, the magnolia, and 
a great number of others, less common, but not of greater, though perhaps 
of equal beauty. As we walk under clusters of flowers, white as snow, 
