Vlll 
with many others, have written so much and so well upon 
the subject, that nothing could have induced me to attempt 
a work of this kind, but the determination to have it wholly 
original, borrowing nothing but the sentiment, and illustrating 
that according to my own ideas. Each month opens with a 
poem containing the entire Bouquet; then, each flower has 
its particular poem, and each poem its own peculiar train of 
thought. 
I love flowers! They have been the friends and com¬ 
panions of my whole life. I owe to their gentle influences 
much that has soothed and brightened the hours of an un¬ 
usually monotonous existence; and so tranquilizing and re¬ 
fining have I ever found their power, that I never see another 
engaged in their cultivation that I do not feel attracted to¬ 
wards her, and experience an innate conviction that she is 
pure in her tastes, and amiable in her disposition. 
The window that is garlanded with flowers, always speaks 
to me of the bright eyes that have been peeping through them, 
and the rosy lips which have breathed over their expanding 
beauties. A garden, a flower garden cultivated by a woman! 
Who does not understand the feelings it awakens — the 
associations it creates — and the reminiscences it recalls ? 
Since the time that Eve walked among the flowers of Eden, 
‘ herself the fairest of them all,’ what woman ever looked half 
so captivating as when arrayed, in some degree, in their ap¬ 
propriate loveliness ? Flowers, too, are the symbols in which 
