Milton.

* * * * *

    Soft roll your incense, herbs and fruits and flowers,
    In mingled clouds to him whose sun exalts
    Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil paints.

Thomson.

A taste for floriculture is spreading amongst Anglo-Indians.  It is a good sign.  It would be gratifying to learn that the same refining taste had reached the Natives also—­even the lower classes of them.  It is a cheap enjoyment.  A mere palm of ground may be glorified by a few radiant blossoms.  A single clay jar of the rudest form may be so enriched and beautified with leaves and blossoms as to fascinate the eye of taste.  An old basket, with a broken tile at the top of it, and the root of the acanthus within, produced an effect which seemed to Calimachus, the architect, “the work of the Graces.”  It suggested the idea of the capital of the Corinthian column, the most elegant architectural ornament that Art has yet conceived.

Flowers are the poor man’s luxury; a refinement for the uneducated.  It has been prettily said that the melody of birds is the poor man’s music, and that flowers are the poor man’s poetry.  They are “a discipline of humanity,” and may sometimes ameliorate even a coarse and vulgar nature, just as the cherub faces of innocent and happy children are sometimes found to soften and purify the corrupted heart.  It would be a delightful thing to see the swarthy cottagers of India throwing a cheerful grace on their humble sheds and small plots of ground with those natural embellishments which no productions of human skill can rival.

The peasant who is fond of flowers—­if he begin with but a dozen little pots of geraniums and double daisies upon his window sills, or with a honeysuckle over his humble porch—­gradually acquires a habit, not only of decorating the outside of his dwelling and of cultivating with care his small plot of ground, but of setting his house in order within, and making every thing around him agreeable to the eye.  A love of cleanliness and neatness and simple ornament is a moral feeling.  The country laborer, or the industrious mechanic, who has a little garden to be proud of, the work of his own hand, becomes attached to his place of residence, and is perhaps not only a better subject on that account, but a better neighbour—­a better man.  A taste for flowers is, at all events, infinitely preferable to a taste for the excitements of the pot-house or the tavern or the turf or the gaming table, or even the festal board, especially for people of feeble health—­and above all, for the poor—­who should endeavor to satisfy themselves with inexpensive pleasures.[001]

In all countries, civilized or savage, and on all occasions, whether of grief or rejoicing, a natural fondness for flowers has been exhibited, with more or less tenderness or enthusiasm.  They beautify religious rites.  They are national emblems:  they find a place in the blazonry of heraldic devices.  They are the gifts and the language of friendship and of love.