A LARGE number of communications have been received, approvatory of the several articles which have appeared in this journal on the subject of imbuing the youthful minds of this country with a love of Horticulture; one lady assures us that she designs giving a lecture now and then to her scholars, accompanied by samples to be eaten. She could probably employ herself in no better work, for she will make lasting and useful impressions.

With a view of extending information on the subject, we translate the following from the Revue Horticole, to show the practical results that are attempted in France:

"An innovation, of which the readers of the 'Revue' have decidedly felt the great importance, has just been introduced into the College of Fontenay-le-Comte; it is an elementary course of gardening, meant to em-bue young minds, early, with the tastes and knowledge which may powerfully contribute, sooner or later, to true and solid happiness.

"Horticulture, which is popularized while extending her conquests, seems as though she wished to gain for herself the fields which agriculture loses - but is it not that she may eventually lead them to the more useful and important labors of her sister, that floriculture draws around her so many followers? This is understood at Fontenay, where the principal of the college and municipality has shown a knowledge of the wants of the times that cannot be too much commended; but we, who know the sympathetic eloquence of M. Boncenne, evidently the right hand and moving spirit of all this work, are not surprised to see it prosper.

"We ought, nevertheless, to congratulate masters of classical science for having no fear of clashing with the antique principles of Greek and Latin, when they rob them of some hours for the culture of flowers, fruits and even vegetables; for having boldly and practically understood that, in France especially, education ought never to be entirely a stranger to the culture of the ground, because this culture is the inexhaustible treasure of our strength and riches.

"The readers of the 'Revue,' who know the spirit and style of M. Boncenne, by his charming articles, and his 'Treatise on Gardening for All,' see with great interest this excellent beginning under the patronage of our eminent co-laborer; it will be pleasant to them and others that the young students of Fontenay will have an opportunity of listening to the weekly lectures he proposes to give; for, at any age the mind attends willingly to" the sweet lessons of philosophy such as M. Boncenne so well knows how to draw from the culture of fruits and flowers, and we are a little afraid that the students of Fontenay will greatly prefer his garden to the garden of Greek roots.

"The father of a family, anxious to urge his heir to lucrative employments, will say, 'It is both pretty and good, but while my son is engaged in studying these trifles, he does not make any advance in the knowledge of that which I wish him early to acquire.'

"Ah! my dear sir, have you forgotten the state of barrenness in which yon formerly found yourself on these subjects, when letters and science were all-absorbing? Are lucre and ambition the only passions that render life happy? If so, is it not melancholy? Has not the soul some fastidious hours, when it needs to go out of the nauseous atmosphere of business to expand itself in the sun, as a sickly plant, to throw its perfume into the regions of poesy, as these wilted petals, which are wasting, regardless of their value, the treasures that heaven has allotted them?

"Your hair has whitened under the weight of imagined important studies, that have occupied your brain and withered your heart; would it not have been better to preserve a longer time your forces and health, in the moderation of these desires and the cultivation of flowers? You have a garden that might be delightful to your sight and productive for your table, but you have never had the time or inclination to embellish it; this is only because no one has ever given you a taste for it, by explaining the elements of gardening. You say, 'We are too far from Fontenay.' No, for we may learn to talk from the abundance of M. Boncenne's books, in which Horticulture is not an abstract science, but the most fascinating of the sciences, because it contains intelligence of a thinker who understands life, the heart of a moralist who knows the destinies of it, and finds in it precious teachings.

"We hear with much pleasure that able ministers have approved of this innovation at Fontenay; this is a fresh proof that government understands the disease of our age, which now turns all minds to lucrative and brilliant professions, and neglects the country. Indeed, ambition has reared her head - professions are sought which will place the aspirant by the side of all that highest fortune and noble birth may attain, and in university programmes what is there to attract young minds to the love of the country? Will the high-sounding discourses of Demosthenes and Cicero do it? They induce dreams of popular glory and applause I Will the poetry of Horace, Pindar, Vigil or Homer? It simply lands the imagination in space.

"You again say, 'No.' It is doubtless from the 'Georgics' and 'Eclogues' that youth will gain a love for agriculture. What is more fascinating than the 'Tityre, tu patulae;' to pass time reclining under the shade of great forest trees, is an image impressed upon the minds and longings of all collegians; and the sweet 'far niente' of the swains of Italy, contrasts strongly with the fatiguing labors of real culture.

"We think, and all good minds will doubtless think with us, that lessons on the spot, practical lessons on gardening, without any other poetry than the beauty of the flowers themselves, with the prospect of realizing dainties every summer from our arbors and orchards, horticultural beauties from our greenhouses, will be the surest tokens for good and right dispositions in the young men of our schools.

"We close our schoolboy days with university degrees; this is all very well in a material view of life. What is left for us unless we have a professional career? Oh! let us furnish our memories and tastes with a coloring ever so slight, of horticulture, that will afford sweet and healthful emotions for days of sadness and disgust of the world. Let our children occupy their leisure time, some hours even from their Greek, not in acquiring the abstract botanical nomenclature, but vegetable physiology; let them have in their memories a place for the names and culture of the most graceful shrubs of our flower gardens".