Flowers have their objects, and were made for our use and pleasure; otherwise, God would never have strewed them, as he has, so bountifully along our paths, and filled the world with their fragrance and beauty. Like all else beautiful, which He made, and pronounced "good," flowers have been objects of admiration and love since man's creation; and their cultivation has ever been a type of civilization and refinement among all people who have left written records behind them. Flowers equally become the cottage and the palace, in their decoration. The humblest cottager, and the mightiest monarch, have equally admired their beauty and their odor; and the whole train of mortals between, have devoted a portion of their time and thoughts to the development of their peculiar properties. But let that pass. Plain country people as we are, there are enough of sufficient variety all around us, to engage our attention, and give us all that we desire to embellish our homes, and engage the time which we have to devote to them. Among the wild flowers, in the mountains and hills of the farthest North, on the margin of their hidden brooks, where "Floats the scarce-rooted watercress;" and on their barren sides, the tiny violet and the laurel bloom, each in their season, with unwonted beauty; and, sloping down on to the plains beneath, blush out in all their summer garniture, the wild rose and the honeysuckle. On, through the Middle States, the lesser flowers of early spring throw out a thousand brilliant dyes, and are surrounded by a host of summer plants, vieing with each other in the exuberance of their tints. On the Alleghanies, through all their vast range, grow up the magnificent dogwood, kalmia, and rhododendron, spangling mile upon mile of their huge sides and tops with white, and covering crags and precipices of untold space with their blushing splendor. Further west, on the prairies, and oak openings, and in the deep woods, too, of the great lakes, and of the Mississippi valley, with the earliest grass, shoot up, all over the land, a succession of flowers, which in variety and profusion of shape, and color, and odor, outvie all the lilies of the gardens of Solomon; and so they continue till the autumnal frosts cut down both grass and flower alike. Further south, along the piney coast, back through the hills and over the vast reach of cotton and sugar lands, another class of flowers burst out from their natural coverts in equal glory; and the magnolia, and the tulip-tree, and the wild orange throw a perfume along the air, like the odors of Palestine. In the deep lagoons of the southern rivers, too, float immense water-lilies, laying their great broad leaves, and expanded white and yellow flowers, upon the surface, which the waters of the Nile in the days of Cleopatra never equaled. And these are nature's wild productions only.