INTRODUCTION. 
lx 
“ And such being wreathed for worldly feast, 
Across the brimming cup some guest 
Their rainbow colors viewing, 
May feel them, with a silent start, 
The covenant his childish heart 
With Nature made,-—renewing.” 
“ Flowers have their language,” says an able 
writer: 11 theirs is an oratory that speaks in 
perfumed silence, and there is tenderness, and 
passion, and even the lightheartedness of mirth, 
in the variegated beauty of their vocabulary. . 
. . . No spoken word can approach to the deli¬ 
cacy of sentiment to be inferred from a flower 
seasonably offered ; the softest expressions may 
be thus conveyed without offence, and even pro¬ 
found grief alleviated, at a moment when the 
most tuneful voice would grate harshly on the 
ear, and when the stricken soul can be soothed 
only by unbroken silence.” Of this latter state, 
how truly hath the poet said : 
“When we are sad, to sadness we apply 
Each plant, and flower, and leaf, that meets the eye.’' 
Do not flowers, lovely flowers, respond to the 
questionings of our hearts in a language more 
powerful, and far more expressive, than that of 
the tongue? Even more potent than the poet’s 
magic lay, 
