/6 - 06g> 
FLOWER EMBLEMS. 
r 
t 7 
OTANY is doubtless a very delightful study; but a 
botanical treatise is one of the last things that I 
should be found engaged in. Truth shall be told: 
my love of flowers—for each particular petal—is 
such, that no thirst after scientific knowledge could 
ever prevail upon me to tear the beautiful objects 
in pieces. I love to see the bud bursting into ma- 
L turity; I love to mark the deepening tints with 
which the beams of heaven paint the expanded flower; nay, with a 
melancholy sort of pleasure, I love to watch that progress towards decay, 
so endearingly bespeaking a fellowship in man’s transient glory ; which, 
even at its height, is but as ‘ the flower of grass.’ I love to gaze upon 
these vegetable gems—to marvel and adore, that such relics of Paradise 
are yet permitted to brighten a path where the iniquity of rebellious 
sinners has sown the thorn and the thistle, under the blighting curse of 
an offended God. Next after the blessed Bible, a flower-garden is to me 
the most eloquent of books-a volume teeming with instruction, conso- 
lation, and reproof. 
But there is yet another, and somewhat fanciful view, that I delight 
to take of these fair things. My course has lain through a busy and a 
chequered path: I have been subjected to many changes of place, and 
have encountered a great variety of characters, who have passed before me 
like visions of the night, leaving but the remembrance of what they were. 
I have frequently, in my lonely rambles among the flowers, assimilated 
one and another of them to those unforgotten individuals until they 
became almost identified; and my garden beais a nomenclature w 
no eye but mine can decipher. 
Chapters on Flowers. 
