If a lovely woman arranging the nosegays and flower-vases, in her parlour, is a sweet living picture, a still sweeter sight does she present to us when she is in the garden itself.  Milton thus represents the fair mother of the fair in the first garden:—­

                    Eve separate he spies. 
    Veil’d in a cloud of fragrance, where she stood,
    Half spied, so thick the roses blushing round
    About her glow’d, oft stooping to support
    Each flower of slender stalk, whose head, though gay,
    Carnation, purple, azure, or speck’d with gold,
    Hung drooping unsustain’d; them she upstays
    Gently with myrtle band, mindless the while
    Herself, though fairest unsupported flower,
    From her best prop so far, and storm so nigh. 
    Nearer he drew, and many a walk traversed
    Of stateliest covert, cedar, pine, or palm;
    Then voluble and bold, now hid, now seen,
    Among thick woven arborets, and flowers
    Imborder’d on each bank, the hand of Eve[128]

Paradise Lost.  Book IX.

Chaucer (in “The Knight’s Tale,”) describes Emily in her garden as fairer to be seen

    Than is the lily on his stalkie green;

And Dryden, in his modernized version of the old poet, says,

    At every turn she made a little stand,
    And thrust among the thorns her lily hand
    To draw the rose.

Eve’s roses were without thorns—­

    “And without thorn the rose,"[129]

It is pleasant to see flowers plucked by the fairest fingers for some elegant or worthy purpose, but it is not pleasant to see them wasted.  Some people pluck them wantonly, and then fling them away and litter the garden walks with them.  Some idle coxcombs, vain

    Of the nice conduct of a clouded cane,

amuse themselves with switching off their lovely heads.  “That’s villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.”  Lander says

    And ’tis my wish, and over was my way,
    To let all flowers live freely, and so die.

Here is a poetical petitioner against a needless destruction of the little tenants of the parterre.

    Oh, spare my flower, my gentle flower,
    The slender creature of a day,
    Let it bloom out its little hour,
        And pass away.

    So soon its fleeting charms must lie
    Decayed, unnoticed and o’erthrown,
    Oh, hasten not its destiny,
        Too like thine own.

Lyte.

Those who pluck flowers needlessly and thoughtlessly should be told that other people like to see them flourish, and that it is as well for every one to bear in mind the beautiful remark of Lord Bacon that “the breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air than in the hand; for in the air it comes and goes like the warbling of music.”