he should be a person that thinks chronology the soul of history, prefers Propria quæ maribus to the finest modern poetry, revels in dictionaries and catalogues, and glories in the Alphabet as the key to knowledge and the foundation of all learning. Such a man only is worthy of becoming in due time, a F.L.S. But a lover of flowers needs be nothing like this. He may be a careless unscientific loiterer among woods, and green lanes, and pasture-lands, with a quick eye for beauty, but a dull memory for names; or he may be a lover of gardening, and may grow fond and tender over his nurslings, with a hatred of your prying and rude-handed botanizers; or, like the Authoress of this Flora Domestica, he may be a lover of the country, caged in London, who

⚫ still retains

His inborn, inextinguishable thirst

Of rural scenes, compensating his loss

By supplemental shifts, the best he may.'

Upon such persons, the botanist would look down with all the proud superiority of a philosopher. He is a man of science, and knows that the hue and smell of flowers are their least distinguishing properties; that colour is a mere accident varying in the same genus, and that the flowers dearest to florists, are scentless. He is a man of learning too, and can overwhelm a mere poet with his cotyledons, his stamens epigynous, hypogynous, and perigynous, his whorls, peduncles, umbels, involucres, panicles, legumes, his serrate, ovate, pinnate, cordate, lanceolate, and all the gynias, œcias, and andrias of his classification. We are not surprised that Botany has never made its way into general popularity, invested as it is with so horrific a nomenclature. A man who is no scholar, is told that he must learn Latin to understand flowers, and he declines the labour, contenting himself with the Gardener's Calendar. Or if he has not forgotten all the Latin which was flogged into him at school, he finds himself but little the better for it when he encounters the motley Latinity of the Botanists. And should he succeed in mastering the vocabulary, what does he find to repay him in what is termed botanical literature? Nothing that addresses itself to either the heart or the fancy, scarcely any thing of the least practical value, but names and technical descriptions ad infinitum.

Nature, however, is worth studying, every page of her great volume, if the commentary is not; and Botany, properly so called, is a branch of natural history not less attractive or important than that which comprehends the varieties of the animal kingdom. If it cannot furnish so much interesting

anecdote as zoology, or so many wonders as entomology, it has the advantage of coming more within the compass of ordinary observation, and of being more intimately connected with the most delightful associations. The sentiment of admiration is more powerfully awakened by the study of the insect world, but the love of nature is, perhaps, most directly promoted by conversing with the exhaustless treasures of the vegetable kingdom. On this account, we are disposed to bestow our warmest commendations on works which, like the Flora Domestica, are adapted to excite an interest in the study of Botany, by shewing that flowers, as well as quadrupeds and insects, have their biography, their literary as well as their natural history, their moral character, and local attachments, and physical habits, as well as their medicinal virtues. Who would think of teaching a young person the natural history of beasts, birds, and fishes, by giving him a compendium of the Linnæan system of classification? As well might he be taught Latin by being made to commit to memory the columns of a dictionary. Compendiums and indexes are for the use of the adept. The first process which the mind must learn, is to observe; the second, to generalize; and therefore, in education, history always precedes science. In like manner, the most proper introduction to systematic and technical arrangements, does not consist in definitions of terms, but in interesting details and specific information. The natural history of flowers and trees is the proper introduction to systematic Botany; and this sort of knowledge, which is so much the more delightful, notwithstanding the contempt with which the initiated treat such details, claims to be considered as the more instructive also.

The immediate design of the Author of this elegant volume, is to assist in the formation and preservation of a portable garden. It is intended for the especial use of persons condemned to reside in cities, who, like herself, can receive consolation for such imprisonment, in the shape of a myrtle, a geranium, an hydrangea, or a rose-tree.

Liking plants, and loving my friends,' says our Author, I have earnestly desired to preserve these kind gifts; but, utterly ignorant of their wants and habits, I have seen my plants die one after the other, rather from attention ill directed than from the want of it. I have many times seen others in the same situation as myself, and found it a common thing, upon the arrival of a new plant, to hear its owner say, "Now, I should like to know how I am to treat this? Should it stand within doors, or without? Should it have much water, or little? Should it stand in the sun, or in the shade?" Even myrtles and geraniums, commonly as they are seen in flower-stands, balVOL. XX. N. S.

2 B

conies, &c. often meet with an untimely death from the ignorance of their nurses. Many a plant have I destroyed, like a fond and mistaken mother, by an inexperienced tenderness; until, in pity to these vegetable nurslings and their nurses, I resolved to obtain and to communicate such information as should be requisite for the rearing and preserving a portable garden in pots. This little volume is the result; the information contained in it has been carefully collected from the best authorities; and henceforward, the death of any plant, owing to the carelessness or ignorance of its nurse, shall be brought in, at the best, as plant-slaughter.'

The volume, it will be seen, comes professedly under the head of Horticulture, rather than of Botany: it relates to a specific branch of Horticulture, however, which may be distinguished by the appellation of parlour-gardening, upon which let no lover of the country look down with contempt, as if such a garden could not afford range at least for the mind. There is in some respects an intenser interest attaching to plants reared and tended under such circumstances. They are as it were the love-tokens of Nature, the keep-sakes of an absent friend, serving us, as Cowper says,

" with a hint That Nature lives.........

Though sickly samples of th' exuberant whole.'

Then, as fellow-exiles and fellow-prisoners, they inspire a sort of sympathy even greater than that which we feel for the caged bird, who seems so merry over his trough and fountain, that it is plain he does not quarrel with the conditions of his servitude. But shrubs and flowers never forget their native soil, and are apt to put on a melancholy aspect, and hang their heads like a sick child for want of a change of air. One is insensibly led, on this account, to contract a fond feeling towards them, such as Gray displays in his Letters. He did not think it beneath him to supply the want of a larger gar'den with flower-pots in his windows, to look to them entirely himself, and to take them in, with all due tenderness, of an evening.' And flowers thus cultivated, acquire the power of influencing the character. This is the case with all simple pleasures whether rural or domestic. The employment in question partakes of both, and while it adds a grace to home, it supplies a source of quiet amusement well adapted to promote mild and serene sentiments and amiable feelings. Cowley quaintly remarks, that

God the first garden made, and the first city Cain.' Which no doubt suggested the often cited line of Cowper, God made the country, and man made the town.

And he exclaims in the same ode,

Who that hath reason, and his smell,
Would not among roses and jasmine dwell,
Rather than all his spirits choke

With exhalations of dirt and smoke,

And all th' uncleanness which does drown,
In pestilential clouds, a populous town?'

But, as God does not all persons bless with the full choice of their own happiness,' that Writer deserves well of the public, who contributes any thing towards softening the privations, or counteracting the moral disadvantages of a town life, by suggesting the best substitutes or apologies for the pleasures of the country. The Babylonian monarch has acquired a deserved celebrity by his hanging gardens; but those stupendous works were oriental luxuries. Every private gentleman may, at small expense, enjoy his portable garden, by attending to our fair Author's recommendations.

The charm of the volume lies, however, in the rich poetical illustrations with which the horticultural and botanical remarks are enlivened. These will please all lovers of flowers and lovers of poetry, whether residing in town or country; whether expatiating in fields and heaths, or circumscribed within the narrow confines of a walled slip of garden, with a straight gravel walk between rows of bright red flower-pots, or, still worse, their only parterre their balcony and flower-stands. These quotations are flowers which

'-have been watered at the Muse's well
With kindly dew.'

And the Author has shewn both taste and industry in selecting and arranging them. We shall best convey an idea of the work by a specimen.

• ARBUTUS.

[Ericineæ. Decandria Monogynia. Strawberry-tree.-French, le fraisier en arbre, l'arbre à fraises, both similar to the common English name: the fruit is called arbouse, arboise, or arboust.—Italian, arbuto, albatro, albare, corbezzolo, from the fruit, called corbezzola. By Pliny the fruit is called unedo.]

This is called the strawberry-tree, from the resemblance of its fruit to a a strawberry. Although it attains a considerable size, it is frequently grown in pots, and will bear transplanting very well. For this operation, April is the most favourable time; the cultivator taking care to preserve the earth about the roots, and to shade them from the mid-day sun, when newly planted.

'As the leaves of the Arbutus remain all the winter, and in spring are pushed off by the shooting of new ones, the tree is always clothed.

In June the young leaves are extremely beautiful; in October and November it is one of the most ornamental trees we have; the blossoms of the present, and the ripe fruit of the former year, both adorning it at the same time. There is an Arbutus now in the garden (in October) before my window, more lovely than I can find language to express. When other trees are losing their beauty, this is in its fullest perfection; and realises the exuberant fiction of the poets,-bearing at once flowers and fruit :

"There is continual spring and harvest there
Continual, both meeting at one time;

For both the boughs do laughing blossoms bear,
And with fresh colours deck the wanton prime,
And eke at once the heavy trees they climb,
Which seem to labour under their fruit's load:
The whiles the joyous birds make their pastime
Amongst the shady leaves, their sweet abode,
And their true loves without suspicion, tell abroad.”
SPENSER'S FAERIE QUEENE.

"Great Spring, before,

Greened all the year; and fruits and blossoms blushed
In social sweetness on the self-same bough.'

"the leafy arbute spreads

THOMSON'S SPRING.

A snow of blossoms, and on every bough

Its vermeil fruitage glitters to the sun. ELTON.

This tree is a native of Greece, Palestine, and many other parts of Asia; of Ireland, and of many parts of the South of Europe. In Spain and Italy the country people eat the fruit, which is said to have been a common article of food in the early ages. Virgil recommends the young twigs for goats in Winter:

"Jubeo frondentia capris

Arbuta sufficere."

'It was used in basket-work:

"Arbuteæ crates, et mystica vannus Iacchi."

Arbutus and oak formed the bier of the young Pallas, the son of Evander.

"Haud segnes alii crates et molle pheretrum Arbuteis texunt virgis et vimine querno,

Extructosque toros obtentu frondis inumbrant."

VIRGIL NEIS, lib. xi.

"Others, with forward zeal, weave hurdles, and a pliant bier of arbute rods, and oaken twigs, and with a covering of boughs shade the funeral bed high-raised."-DAVIDSON'S TRANSLATION.

'Horace, too, speaks of it, and celebrates its shade:

"Nunc viridi membra sub arbuto

Stratus,"

Millar, after giving some of these quotations, adds, “I hope we