The amusements and fancies of children, when connected with flowers, are always pleasing, being generally the conceptions of innocent minds unbiassed by artifice or pretence; and their love of them seems to spring from a genuine feeling and admiration, a kind of sympathy with objects as fair as their own untainted minds: and I think that it is early flowers which constitute their first natural playthings; though summer presents a greater number and variety, they are not so fondly selected. We have our daisies strung and wreathed about our dress; our coronals of orchises and primroses; our cowslip balls, &c.; and one application of flowers at this season I have noticed, which, though perhaps it is local, yet it has a remarkably pretty effect, forming for the time one of the gayest little shrubs that can be seen. A small branch or long spray of the white thorn, with all its spines uninjured, is selected; and on these its alternate thorns, a white and a blue violet, plucked from their stalks, are stuck upright in succession, until the thorns are covered, and when placed in a flower-pot of moss, has perfectly the appearance of a beautiful vernal flowering dwarf shrub, and as long as it remains fresh is an object of surprise and delight. 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 all 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