
vi INTRODUCTION. 
a rude and primitive state, the words are few and 
simple that suffice to clothe in language the thoughts 
and desires of an untutored race of men; but with 
every increasing want, and every new desire, names 
and forms of thought must be created, until the brief 
vocabulary of the savage tribe swells into the com- 
plex dictionary of an intelligent and civilized people. 
And so has it been with this universal language. 
‘+ HTe cometh forth as « flower, and is cut down,” is 
the expressive aud universally intelligible language 
of Scripture. And no less does it easily prefigure 
hope than frailty. We strew them over the shroud 
of departed love, and plant: them to bloom brightly 
above the grave, that they may speak in spring of a 
brighter seasou of hope ; and in summer of that hea- 
venly clime that knows only of an eternal summer 
and a cloudless sky ; and, in all seasons, of love, and 
purity, and peace. ‘To these, the simple expressions 
of natural feeling, have been added from time to 
time, from the pages of classic poetry and the more 
complex fancies of later writers, a series of ideas at- 
tached to every flower, by means of which the nose- 
gay may be made to take the place of more formal 
epistles, 
- lor the more complicated uses of this beautiful 
language, a few hints may be necessary, to show 
how extensive is the range of thought its alphabet 
may communicate. For example, if a flower be 
given reversed, it implies the opposite of that thought 
er sentiment which it is ordinarily understood to ex- 
press: again, a rosebud from which the thorns have 
been removed, but which has still its leaves, conveys 
the sentiment, ‘I fear, but I hope,” the thorns Im- 


