instructions to the mere physiology, or anatomy, or classification or
nomenclature of their favorite science, would go more into the poetry
of it, and teach young people to appreciate the moral influences of the
floral tribes--to draw honey for the human heart from the sweet breasts
of flowers--to sip from their radiant chalices a delicious medicine for
the soul.

Flowers are frequently hallowed by associations far sweeter than their
sweetest perfume. "I am no botanist:" says Southey in a letter to Walter
Savage Landor, "but like you, my earliest and best recollections are
connected with flowers, and they always carry me back to other days.
Perhaps this is because they are the only things which affect our senses
precisely as they did in our childhood. The sweetness of the violet is
always the same; and when you rifle a rose and drink, as it were, its
fragrance, the refreshment is the same to the old man as to the boy.
Sounds recal the past in the same manner, but they do not bring with
them individual scenes like the cowslip field, or the corner of the
garden to which we have transplanted field-flowers."

George Wither has well said in commendation of his Muse:

Her divine skill taught me this;
That from every thing I saw
I could some instruction draw,
And raise pleasure to the height
By the meanest object's sight,
By the murmur of a spring
_Or the least bough's rustelling;
By a daisy whose leaves spread
Shut, when Titan goes to bed;