KNOWLEDGE AND USE OF FLORICULTURE. 
281 
end. Churches have been thickly planted, and sabbath-schools 
established in every village; yet the anticipated results have not 
followed. Bridges prematurely dilapidated, milestones wan¬ 
tonly defaced, and denunciatory placards exhibited in every 
plantation, are but a few of the signs of a still existing barbarism. 
In fact, the much boasted intelligence of our peasantry is only 
of the grossest kind, and very far short indeed of the refined 
. nature, that is best calculated to make a man either a proper father 
or neighbour in this world, or to give him proper ideas of the 
next. Nor is it strange it should be so ; the mode of education 
hitherto adopted has always had a greater tendency to enslave the 
mind than to instruct it—at best, it has been like teaching a 
person to read a book before teaching him the alphabet. 
Who does not allow that early impressions are powerful and 
lasting ? Who has not seen the hearty, joyful avidity with which 
children gather wild flowers ? Who has not observed that in 
general the adult, who still retains that innocent first love of 
nature, is more intelligent, more refined, and more humane, than 
those who have retained it not ? Who that has made the expe¬ 
riment with the wild roving urchin, who greedily, roughly, and 
regardlessly plucked every flower that came in his way, of telling 
him the names and properties of flowers, but has observed, that 
with the information, his love for flowers increase, and respect for 
them begin ; that the plant he would formerly have trampled on, 
or roughly plucked to throw immediately away, was now respected 
and left uninjured ? Here, then, a double good is easily achieved, 
a desire for knowledge established, and a tendency to wantonness 
checked. Here, then, a simple pleasant effort shows more signs of 
future good fruit, than does many of the splendidly conceived 
day-dreams of the lofty enthusiast, or the schemes of the scholastic 
pedant. Nor need the clergy—who are in the habit of inculcating 
the doctrine, that passiveness as regards this world, and a belief 
in some particular creed as regards the future, is the full sum 
of our duties—fear, that thus encouraging a love for nature’s 
beauties will make men bad. Oh no ; “ any pursuit which makes 
men acquainted with the peculiarities of vegetable economy, in 
however small a degree, has a beneficial effect upon the mind and 
understanding.”* And if, instead of shutting public gardens, 
*• Rhind’s History of the Vegetable Kingdom. 
VOL. II. NO, XII. 0 0 
