elementary instructions, and good copies being sufficient; and
when the learner has made a little progress, nature itself presents
a boundless variety of copies. To the science of Botany it is a
most valuable assistant. Ladies who have reared a fine specimen
of a favourite plant, by being enabled to copy it, convert a fleeting
and transitory pleasure into a permanent source of satisfaction.
     But the advantage of learning to draw Flowers, and other
simple natural objects, in a graceful and easy style, is far greater
than may at first sight be imagined; it improves and enlarges the
mind, by leading it to observe the various beauties of Nature
that are scattered over every sprig, stem, flower, or leaf: it
materially tends to chasten and correct the taste.  Sir Joshua
Reynolds, that great master of elegance, strongly recommends
historical painters to study and paint from groups of Flowers, as
objects the best calculated to form a free and graceful manner
of composing.
     It is, however, of the greatest importance for the young student
to avoid copying firom ill-designed or badly coloured patterns: this
observation is rendered necessary from the numbers of drawings
which are continually presented to the eye, of groups of Flowers
gaudily coloured, but apparently all pressed together, and without
either grace or correctness in the design and manner of grouping:
indeed I am sorry to add, there are few others to be obtained, even at
our best repositories of the elegancies of art, which, with all their
excellence in other subjects, do not appear to have been equally
successful in this: but the inevitable consequence of drawing from