422 
STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
nify as well as justify gardening, the science or knowledge of 
horticulture, I could not resist the temptation. Where God 
has put man—his own likeness—you will, I trust, agree with 
me, man may still take his stand, regardless of the charge of 
effeminacy. And above all, where gentle woman is placed 
along side of him in his garden—there, and there alone, so far 
as I have any knowledge, is your true Eden to be found ; the 
world itself, the outside creation being left to those con¬ 
temners of the beautiful for whom paradise itself would have 
no charms. Beauty cannot be ignored any more than virtue, 
goodness—both are essential to the happiness of man. 
The love of horticulture is*then of no effeminate character, 
but arises, though we may be unconscious of the fact, in that 
love,of repose, which is innate in the bosoms of all men, but 
most manifest among the intellectual and refined. I know that 
it is common to attribute it to a love of nature. But this is 
an error in my opinion. An ardent lover of nature usually 
seeks the indulgence of his passion in activity, in restlessness, 
in travel, in exploration and adventure. Not so with the 
lover of the garden. He is found wedded to his idol at home. 
And if we were to judge him*by the calm, and quiet, and hap¬ 
piness he finds there, we should find that his love for a garden 
had both for its result and origin the love of repose. Nei¬ 
ther is there in this effeminacy nor weakness, since repose itself 
is one of the grandest features of the Divinity, is indeed one 
of his attributes, a quality by which man as well as things 
may be fitly tested for their own true worth. 
Horticulture then is like all other good and perfect things, 
of divine origin and nature, a science pleasant and useful, and 
in this, its origin and nature, is seen its true relationship to 
ni ; 
The duties of man, in this relationship, are as numerous as 
they are pleasant and profitable. The earth, the seasons, his 
own necessities as well as his desires, invite him to these duties 
and, to a great extent, indicate how they shall be done. This 
great world of ours has sometimes seemed to me like a great 
picture gallery, full of beautiful picture frames—^some fulh 
