20 
Introduction. 
“ They wreathe the harp at banquets tried, 
With them we crown the crested brave; 
They deck the maid—adorn the bride—- 
Or form the chaplets for her grave.” 
The richly varied and magnificent Flora of the American, 
continent has offered her sons and daughters a floral vocabu¬ 
lary capable of almost unlimited application, and readily have 
the denizens of the New World seized upon and resuscitated 
these decaying systems of the Eastern Hemisphere. The 
numerous brilliant and original tokens which they have already 
sent forth in explanation of the American language of flowers 
prove that they are not dependent upon European codes for 
emblematic communion ; as Holmes—their own witty-wise 
Holmes—says: 
“They ask no garlands sought beyond the tide, 
But take the leaflets gathered at their side.” 
Many blossoms gathered from Columbia’s well-stored garden 
will be discerned in this bouquet; but this bright bud of Charles 
Fenno Hoffmann’s will not fail to increase the brilliancy of the 
tout ensemble: 
THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS 
“Teach thee their language? Sweet, I know no tongue, 
No mystic art those gentle things declare ; 
I ne’er could trace the schoolman’s trick among 
Created things so delicate and rare. 
Their language ? Prithee! why, they are themselves 
But bright thoughts syllabled to shape and hue,— 
The tongue that erst was spoken by the elves, 
When tenderness as yet within the world was new. 
“ And, oh! do not their soft and starry eyes— 
Now bent to earth, to heaven now meekly pleading. 
Their incense fainting as it seeks the skies, 
Yet still from earth with freshening hope receding— 
Say, do not these to'every heart declare, 
With all the silent eloquence of truth, 
The language that they speak is Nature’s prayer, 
To give her back those spotless days of youth?” 
That flowers do mingle in the general prayer of nature, no 
thinking mind can deny. The links that bind them—that have 
ever bound them—to humanity, are too manifold to be broken 
or concealed. From the earliest historic ages, flowers have 
mingled with the deeds, and, alas! misdeeds, of man; and it 
