owth of this dislike to the eternal stillness of a painted
scene is a chief cause of the disaster. It operates among the best class
of patrons.

For such men orchids are a blessed relief. Fancy has not conceived such
loveliness, complete all round, as theirs--form, colour, grace,
distribution, detail, and broad effect. Somewhere, years ago--in Italy
perhaps, but I think at the Taylor Institution, Oxford--I saw the
drawings made by Rafaelle for Leo X. of furniture and decoration in his
new palace; be it observed in parenthesis, that one who has not beheld
the master's work in this utilitarian style of art has but a limited
understanding of his supremacy. Among them were idealizations of
flowers, beautiful and marvellous as fairyland, but compared with the
glory divine that dwells in a garland of _Odontoglossum Alexandrae_,
artificial, earthy. Illustrations of my meaning are needless to experts,
and to others words convey no idea. But on the table before me now
stands a wreath of _Oncidium crispum_ which I cannot pass by. What
colourist would dare to mingle these lustrous browns with pale gold,
what master of form could shape the bold yet dainty waves and crisps and
curls in its broad petals, what human imagination could bend the
graceful curve, arrange the clustering masses of its bloom? All beauty
that the mind can hold is there--the quintessence of all charm and
fancy. Were I acquainted with an atheist who, by possibility, had brain
and feeling, I would set that spray before him and await reply. If
Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like a lily of the field, the
angels of heaven have no vesture more ethereal than the flower of the
orchid. Let us take breath.

Many persons indifferent to gardening--who are repelled, indeed, by its
prosaic accompaniments, the dirt, the manure, the formality, the spade,
the rake, and all that--love flowers nevertheless. For such these plants
are more than a relief. Observe my Oncidium. It stands in a pot, but
this is only for convenience--a receptacle filled with moss. The long
stem feathered with great blossoms springs from a bare slab of wood. No
mould nor peat surrounds it; there is absolutely nothing save the roots
that twine round their support, and the wire that sustains it in the
air. It asks no attention beyond its daily bath. From the day I tied it
on that block last year--reft from home and all its pleasures, bought
with paltry silver at Stevens' Auction Rooms--I have not