IV 
CULTIVALION AND 
grander matrons of the advanced year ; they 
would be unheeded, perhaps lost, in the rosy 
bowers of summer and of autumn ; no, it is 
our first meeting with a long-lost friend, the 
reviving glow of a natural affection, that so 
warms °us at this season : to maturity they 
give pleasure, as a harbinger of the renewal 
of life, a signal of awakening nature, or of a 
higher promise ; to youth, they are expanding 
being, opening years, hilarity, and joy ; and 
the child, let loose from the house, riots in 
the flowery mead, and is 
“ Monarch of all he surveys. 
“ There is not a prettier emblem of spring 
than an infant sporting in the sunny field, 
with its osier basket wreathed with butter-cups, 
orchises, and daisies. With summer flowers 
we seem to live as with our neighbours, in 
harmony and good-will ; but spring flowers 
are cherished as private friendships. 
“ No portion of creation has been resorted to 
by mankind with more success for the orna¬ 
ment and decoration of their labours than the 
vegetable world. The rites, emblems, and 
mysteries of religion ; national achievements, 
eccentric masks, and the capricious visions of 
fancy, have all been wrought by the hand of 
the sculptor, 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. 
