6 
THE FLORIST’S JOURNAL. 
this attention, have this effect, that the garden of the sluggard, 
overrun with weeds, is a figurative expression used in Holy Writ 
for a man who is careless and indifferent in all matters ; and if one 
enters an apartment in which even a few flowers in pots are kept, 
and finds those flowers neglected, ragged, and of sickly ap¬ 
pearance, then one may conclude with perfect certainty, that the 
owner of these neglected flowers is slovenly and negligent in 
every matter of which he has the charge. Thus, a fondness for 
flowers, and a careful and judicious management of them, are 
both the means and the indications of a virtuous and orderly 
habit in all matters; and this quite independently of the plea¬ 
sure or the profit which the flowers themselves directly furnish. 
We have thought better to take this moral view of Floriculture, 
than to expatiate on the pleasure derived from paying attention 
to that in which every body takes delight ; but there is yet 
another, and certainly not a less valuable inference that may be 
drawn from cherishing or neglecting those finest, but feeblest and 
most fleeting, of Nature’s children. The love of flowers for their 
own sakes, is, perhaps, the most unmixed instance of the love of 
beauty which is anywhere to be met with ; and if the sentiment 
of beauty can once be made to occupy a high place in the mind 
of any man, it tends more to root out the mean and grovelling 
appetites than any other we can name. If we find that a man 
has a garden, whether large or small, attached or approximate to 
his dwelling, and that this garden lies in a state of neglect and is 
flowerless, then we may rest assured, that the man is of low, 
grovelling, and selfish character, and that all his pleasures if 
pleasures we can call them—have in them the animal lording it 
over the intellectual part of the man. Such a man may be of 
high rank in society, in as far as wealth, or any otliei ciicum** 
stance in which the man has no real merit, is concerned, or he 
may rank low in the sense of the term ; but we may rest assured 
that the man with the neglected and flowerless garden has always 
about him something mean and tending to grossness. 
When we began this preliminary article, it was our intention to 
offer some" remarks upon the general principle according to which 
flowers are improved by cultivation ; but we have space left onl) 
to enunciate the principle, and must leave the illustration of it 
to some future opportunity. The principle is this : oui powei 
of improving flowers, that is, of breaking them from those 
