Our country, though originally but sparingly endowed with the living
jewelry of nature, is now rich in the choicest flowers of all other
countries.

Foreigners of many lands,
They form one social shade, as if convened
By magic summons of the Orphean lyre.

_Cowper_.

These little "foreigners of many lands" have been so skilfully
acclimatized and multiplied and rendered common, that for a few
shillings an English peasant may have a parterre more magnificent than
any ever gazed upon by the Median Queen in the hanging gardens of
Babylon. There is no reason, indeed, to suppose that even the first
parents of mankind looked on finer flowers in Paradise itself than are
to be found in the cottage gardens that are so thickly distributed over
the hills and plains and vallies of our native land.

The red rose, is the red rose still, and from the lily's cup
An odor fragrant as at first, like frankincense goes up.

_Mary Howitt_.

Our neat little gardens and white cottages give to dear old England that
lovely and cheerful aspect, which is so striking and attractive to her
foreign visitors. These beautiful signs of a happy political security
and individual independence and domestic peace and a love of order and a
homely refinement, are scattered all over the land, from sea to sea.