Flowers

Flowers stimulate industry as well ag lighten toil - íor we must have thm. We aru cold without them, but to have theiu requires patiënt study, patiënt culture, and untiring deternunation. Every one must be studied alone. ín perf'ection, tney can bo had only in connectiou with art and a, kind of horticultural genius. Their culture is an art. How they breathe, and eat, and drink. HoW they vary their species - under what lawa. Flowers aro also servitors of our imagination ; they bring food to the poet. They produce an atmosphere that íb peculiarly conductivo to rhythm. I do not know why it is color and grace of motion and delicacy of form and perfume have such a tendency to make every eighth or tenth syllable rhyme, and every une begin with a capital, but so it is. What a constant tribute poetry paya to flowers. Can you fiud one of the great singers who has not at least a line, and niostly a poem, in honor of floral charins ? Take away noble landscapes, level dowa the hills, inake the sun risa aud set ia drab, kill out the flowers - and the poet's corner would become very speedily a bean patch. Now the flowers come to the brain with a delicate touch, like the finger of a inother in sleep that takes wnnkles out of dreams - tiny childrea with their arnis full of every imaginable grace. You can see purity, modesty, benevolence, auibition, watchfulness, patience, truth, all somewhere about your feet. But not only do they inspire much of the rhyme of life. What do you suppose must be the power of a single fuchsia in a family ? It never catches the eye of the ruother without resulting in a song ; it calis the attention of the children, and displaces the rudeness of coarse work or vulgar contact, It doubtless has a powerful influence in making the whole faruily more neat, more tasteful, moie couiteous, more refined. I like to take out the animal - tho feeding plague of eating- by putting a bouquet amone tüe dishes. -