6 
FREFACE. 
their Creator: and ours shall be the office, in 
this little volume, to translate their pleasing lan¬ 
guage, and to show that no spoken word can ap¬ 
proach to the delicacy of sentiment to be inferred 
from a flower seasonably offered ; that the softest 
impressions may be thus conveyed without of¬ 
fence, and even profound 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. 
In treating of so gay a subject, we will not 
make a parade of our learning, to tell our fair 
readers what fine things Pliny has said upon it; 
or, in the spirit of prosing, write a crabbed trea¬ 
tise upon the Egyptian hieroglyphics. We will 
even spare them a dissertation upon the Floral 
Alphabet of the effeminate Chinese; they had, 
and have, their flowers and their feelings, their 
emblems and their ecstacies. Let them enjoy 
them. We shall do no more than rove through 
the European Garden, to cull its beauties, to ar¬ 
range them into odoriferous significance, and to 
teach our refined and purifying science to those 
fair beings, the symbols of whose mortal beauty 
arc but inadequately found in the most glorious 
