One would think that a love of
flowers must produce or imply a taste for simplicity and nature in all
things.[127]
As by way of encouragement to the native gardeners--to enable them to
dispose of the floral produce of their gardens at a fair price--the
Horticultural Society has withdrawn from the public the indulgence of
gratuitous supplies of plants, it would be as well if some men of taste
were to instruct these native nursery-men how to lay out their grounds,
(as their fellow-traders do at home,) with some regard to neatness,
cleanliness and order. These flower-merchants, and even the common
_malees_, should also be instructed, I think, how to make up a decent
bouquet, for if it be possible to render the most elegant things in the
creation offensive to the eye of taste, that object is assuredly very
completely effected by these swarthy artists when they arrange, with
such worse than Dutch precision and formality, the ill-selected,
ill-arranged, and tightly bound treasures of the parterre for the
classical vases of their British masters. I am often vexed to observe the
idleness or apathy which suffers such atrocities as these specimens of
Indian taste to disgrace the drawing-rooms of the City of Palaces. This is
quite inexcusable in a family where there are feminine hands for the
truly graceful and congenial task of selecting and arranging the daily
supply of garden decorations.
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