No portion of creation has been resorted to by mankind with more success
for the ornament and decoration of their labors than the vegetable
world. The rites, emblems, and mysteries of religion; national
achievements, eccentric masks, and the capricious visions of fancy, have
been wrought by the hand of the sculptor on the temple, the altar, or
the tomb; but plants, their foliage, flowers, or fruits, as the most
graceful, varied, and pleasing objects that meet our view, have been
more universally the object of design, and have supplied the most
beautiful, and perhaps the earliest, embellishments of art. The
pomegranate, the almond, and flowers were selected, even in the
wilderness by divine appointment, to give form to the sacred utensils;
the rewards of merit, the wreath of the victor, were arboraceous. In
later periods the acanthus, the ivy, the lotus, the vine, the palm, and
the oak flourished under the chisel or in the loom of the artist; and in
modern days the vegetable world affords the almost exclusive decorations
of ingenuity and art. The cultivation of flowers is, of all the
amusements of mankind, the one to be selected and approved as the most
innocent in itself, and most perfectly devoid of injury or annoyance to
others; the employment is not only conducive to health and peace of
mind, but probably more good-will has arisen and friendships been
founded by the intercourse and communication connected with this pursuit
than from any other whatsoever; the pleasures, the ecstasies of the
horticulturist are harmless and pure; a streak, a tint, a shade, becomes
his triumph, which, though often obtained by chance, are secured alone
by morning care, by evening caution, and
the vigilance of days—an employ which in its various grades excludes
neither the opulent nor the indigent, and, teeming with boundless
variety, affords an unceasing excitement to emulation, without contempt
or ill-will.