ANNUAL ADDRESS. 
421 
be likely to reach such people through the publication of our 
transactions, to disabuse their minds, if possible, and to give 
them other and better impressions of us. 
There are in our community those who erroneously imagine 
that the love of the beautiful, even when it involves the use¬ 
ful, pertains to or implies effeminacy of character, and that flor¬ 
ists and fruit-growers are necessarily men wanting in the more 
manly qualities of the mind. 
There are, also, those in society, who, having no adequate 
appreciation of the wonders and beauties of creation, of the 
stars which illumine the heavens, or the flowers which adorn 
the earth, or of anything beyond the things which minister* to 
the grosser senses, utterly and ignorantly condemn all the re¬ 
fining influences as well of art and of science, as of nature. 
For them, there is nothing grand and generous in the open day 
of summer, nothing soft and witching in the silver hour of 
evening; neither music in the gentle breeze, nor perfume in 
the perfume-breathing flower. For them, there is no tongue 
in trees, no books in the running brooks, nor good in anything. 
Nature never smiles for them. The kindly voice, the song of 
birds, the merry laughter of children, all alike are but dumb 
meaningless things. Not a single chord in their breasts to vi¬ 
brate with beauty or gladness. How aptly has the poet 
painted an individual of this class— 
“A primrose by the river’s brim, 
A yellow primrose was to him, 
' Aed it was nothing more.” 
We believe, and it is a belief full of wondrous pleasure 
and satisfation to the mind, that God created the heavens and 
the earth. The dominion thereof was given to man. Do we 
not acknowledge this to be immeasurably grand, beautiful 
and God-like? This work, this creation, was for us! Does 
not the gift argue the fitness of a like grandeur and likeness 
to God in the receiver ? And yet this great work was to be com¬ 
pleted ; and so “ the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, and 
there He put the man whom He had formed.” Pardon me, if 
you please, the quotation on such an occasion; in order to dig- 
