increases with age. It is generally the most indulged in the two
extremes of life. In middle age men are often too much involved in the
affairs of the busy world fully to appreciate the tranquil pleasures in
the gift of Flora. Flowers are the toys of the young and a source of the
sweetest and serenest enjoyments for the old. But there is no season of
life for which they are unfitted and of which they cannot increase the
charm.

"Give me," says the poet Rogers, "a garden well kept, however small, two
or three spreading trees and a mind at ease, and I defy the world." The
poet adds that he would not have his garden, too much extended. He seems
to think it possible to have too much of a good thing. "Three acres of
flowers and a regiment of gardeners," he says, "bring no more pleasure
than a sufficiency." "A hundred thousand roses," he adds, "which we look
at _en masse_, do not identify themselves in the same manner as even a
very small border; and hence, if the cottager's mind is properly
attuned, the little cottage-garden may give him more real delight than
belongs to the owner of a thousand acres." In a smaller garden "we
become acquainted, as it were," says the same poet, "and even form
friendships with, individual flowers." It is delightful to observe how
nature thus adjusts the inequalities of fortune and puts the poor man,
in point of innocent happiness, on a level with the rich. The man of the
most moderate means may cultivate many elegant tastes, and may have
flowers in his little garden that the greatest sovereign in the world
might enthusiastically admire. Flowers are never vulgar. A rose from a
peasant's patch of ground is as fresh and elegant and fragrant as if it
had been nurtured in a Royal parterre, and it would not be out of place
in the richest porcelain vase of the most aristocratical drawing-room in
Europe. The poor man's flower is a present for a princess, and of all
gifts it is the one least liable to be rejected even by the haughty. It