76 LADIES’ FLOWER GARDENER. 
CHAPTER VIII. 
ON HOUSE AND WINDOW GARDENING, 
(BY MR. CHARLES MACKINTOSH.) 
K culture of flowering and sweet-scented plants, as oma- 
nents in human dwellings, has been practiced from such 
emote antiquity that no one can name the date of its 
origin. House plants are also a kind of ornaments which all the 
labors of the most refined art can never exceed or even reach ; 
and hence in the most refined and luxurious states of society, 
flowers maintain a high place among the leading ornaments ; and 
the assembly-rooms of beauty and fashion, and the banqueting- 
halls of the noble and the great, would look tame and barren 
without those most beautiful and most appropriate decorums. 
Farther, it is one of the great merits of these lovely produc¬ 
tions of nature, that they are for the humble as well as for the 
high. The humblest window in the most obscure and crowded 
court of a city may have its flower-pot; and they who are cut 
off by occupation or other circumstances from the free range of 
growing nature, may still command a little vegetable kingdom of 
their own in a few well-selected and carefully-attended flowers. 
A species of ornament, which is in its own nature so pleasing 
and so innocent, which requires far less labor and expense than 
many other ornaments of very inferior value, and which adapts itself 
to every imaginable class of society, is surely worthy of the study, 
the encouragement, and the care of all who seek happiness to 
themselves, or wish to promote the happiness of others. 
