crowned, by having a wreath hung over it. The crown is awarded to the plant that is pronounced the finest production of the Salon, which sometimes depends on its rarity or novelty, and sometimes on the size and splendour of a well-known flower, whose appearance indicates superior culture and treatment. These meetings have contributed materially towards the perfection to which the Dutch florists have brought several genera of plants. The bouquets offered for sale at Ghent are both numerous and beautiful, it being a common practice there to carry a flower, not only on the promenade, but also to the church. As the world leads we follow. Fashion does not at present sanction any but coachmen in wearing nosegays in this country, yet it has not influence sufficient to banish flowers from the garden, since we notice that those who have only a small piece of land attached to their dwellings generally devote it to the service of Flora; whilst others, who have larger plots, set some portion aside for the same purpose, and such as have ample domains may be said to vie with each other in their devotions to the flowery goddess. So strongly is this love of natural beauties implanted in the breast of man, that the greater part of those persons who have no allotment in this terrestrial globe, except what is confined in an earthen vase of some few inches in diameter, contrive to raise a plant, and thus peep at nature even within their brick-wall bounds. There the picture stands A fragment, and the spoutless tea-pot there; COWPER. Our observations on the formation of flowergardens can only be general, so much depend ing on extent and situation, that the best possible directions for one spot would be absurd when put into practice in other sites. When we are too much confined for want of land to delight by the appearance of extent, we should endeavour to please by beauty; and where the bounds are too limited to dis play taste on a large scale, elegance should be associated with neatness. Addison says there are as many kinds of gardening as of poetry; the makers of parterres and flower-gardens he styles the epigrammatists and sonnetteers in the art; contrivers of bowers and grottos, treillages and cascades, he compares to romance writers; whilst those who lay out extensive grounds, he honours by the title of heroic poets. Thus, to imitate the serpentine windings of large plantations in small gardens, is scarcely less ridiculous than it would be to use heroic strains in writing an epitaph on a cock robin; and it discovers an equal want of judgment and good taste when we see large grounds frittered into the trifling minutiae of a parterre, displaying hearts and diamonds, where nature ought to appear as if at liberty to sport in all her gay, luxuriant frolics. Even in the choice of our plants we should take into consideration the extent of our grounds, for large plants in small gardens are like the use of high-flown language when improperly selected for familiar subjects. The all-wise Creator who raised the cedar, formed also the smallest moss; but the former he planted on the mountains of Lebanon, whilst the latter was placed on a pebble. From this wise ordinance of nature, we should learn to select Flora's miniature beauties for the small parterre, leaving the towering and wide-spreading plants to ornament extensive grounds. Flowers never appear to so great advantage as when forming a foreground in the shrubbery or to the borders of woods. In such situations they seem to have planted themselves as if for the sake of shelter, whilst the boldness of the trees and shrubs add as much to the delicacy of their blossoms as the mass of foliage contributes to the brilliancy of their colours. The bolder flowers should be halfobscured by shrubs, for by being but partially seen their effect is materially heightened. The smaller flowers must occupy the sloping sides of banks, because they are then brought near to the eye, and they will generally be found growing naturally in such situations. A greater part of the earliest flower ing plants may be set under the branches of shrubs and trees, as they thus fill up spaces that would otherwise appear naked in the spring, and their decaying state is veiled over in the later season by the foliage of the boughs. The same arrangement should be made in small gardens, by covering the ground under Rose bushes and other shrubs which blossom in the summer, with the earliest flowers of the year, such as Snowdrops and Crocuses, &c., which are rather benefited than injured by the partial shelter; and the space of ground which they would otherwise require in the parterre may be allotted to those plants that will not flourish in such situations. The error most frequently committed in planting the parterre, is the inattention shown to the succession of the flowering of plants; but without a perfect knowledge and due regard to this material part of the art of gardening, the parterre will frequently become destitute of flowers at different seasons of the year; whereas the desirable object of continuing an uninterrupted succession of gaiety in the flower-garden, may be attained |