290 
THE FLORIST. 
if I fail in interesting you, it must be entirely laid to my own charge ; 
and one great advantage I do feel that I have, that there are very few 
English persons who have not a taste for it in some way ; for even 
those very unsentimental people who say, “Of all the flowers in the 
garden, commend me to a Cauliflower,” would probably expend a good 
deal of time and care and expense in getting a good head of that very 
favourite vegetable for their table; and if the great Napoleon had said 
of us that we were a nation of gardeners, instead of a nation of shop¬ 
keepers, he would not have been far out. Hence I feel sure of your 
kind and patient attention to what, after all, may prove a very dull 
and uninteresting lecture. 
Our great English philosopher, Lord Bacon, says of gardening, “ It 
is the purest of human pleasures; it is the greatest refreshment to the 
spirits of man, without which buildings and palaces are but gross 
handiworks, and a man shall ever see that when ages grow to civility 
and elegancy, men come to build stately, sooner than to garden finely, 
as if gardening were the greater perfection, “ hence a love of gardening, 
and a taste for gardening, are two distinct things, love, or desire for 
anything is natural to us, and so to some extent is taste ; there are 
some persons, for instance, who never have an eye for the harmony of 
colours ; who will put on a blue bonnet and a green dress, with a yellow 
shawl, or some outrageous combination of that sort ? and who, there¬ 
fore, though they may expend a great deal of money on their attire, 
only make guys of themselves ; those persons we at once pronounce to be 
deficient in taste, though we at the same time never question their love of 
dress, there is this difference, however, that we can hardly call love of 
anything a matter to be studied, unwearied, and improved, unconsciously 
to ourselves, the love increases, but no man ever yet set himself seriously 
to love painting, or music—he feels this would be utterly useless—but 
taste may be. The musician, who has spent a long life in the study 
and practice of good music, finds that he is much more sensitive to the 
violations of good taste, to the florid and extravagant productions of some 
popular composers, than he used to be ; the man who has studied the 
various productions of the old masters, until Claude, Cuyp, and Hobbima, 
has tutored his eye as to the real beauties of landscape painting, is 
much less likely to tolerate the cold and cheerless scenes that fill the 
canvas of some modern painters, than when he first began to admire 
the art; and so proportionably I contend, that as the taste for anything 
is cultivated, will our enjoyment in it be increased ; and yet this is by no 
means generally acknowledged. You have seen a man intently 
scanning an old, and to you most uninteresting oil painting. He reve¬ 
rently rubs it with his silk handkerchief, or moistens a small corner of 
it, and seems in ecstacy over the little portion he has thus brought out 
into stronger relief, and you have wondered perhaps at what he could 
possibly see there. If he dilate on its merits, tell you how exquisite it 
is, you probably have shrugged your shoulders and thought him only a 
poor enthusiast. Or you have sat beside some one when one of 
Handel’s glorious anthems has been sung by a large number of voices ; 
you consider the effect very fine, but you look at your next neighbour— 
“ His eye in a fine frenzied fury glowing,” 
