portray the delicate purity of a 



lovely group of wild roses I had brought 



back from a country ramble, and the difficulty 



of the "lovely shell-pink effect " was mine also. » 



Without bringing on myself the reproach of being 

 the bad and quarrelsome worker of the well-known 

 proverb, I think I may say there is no pigment made that 

 can approach the transparent beauty of a natural flower. The 

 colours we use are as perfect as it is possible for modern chemical science 

 to make them, but how can we expect these productions of human hands 

 to come near the original ? Just as little as the workings of our little brains, 

 and the handicraft of our little hands, can in our highest endeavours approach 

 the charm the great Maker of all things beautiful has given us in the humblest flower. 



When we look with admiration at some wonderful' specimens of ancient eastern craftsmanship, 

 we cannot fail to notice an irrcgularitj' of design that, in our ideas, constitutes part of its 

 charm. But we should wonder that the artist hand, possessed of so much cunning, could not 

 surely have avoided these apparent mistakes, did we not know that his religion taught 

 him, " Only One can make things perfect," and that the errors were not accident, but 

 design. We of a different faith know that the mistakes will come of tltetnselves, 

 iJL however we may strive for perfection, and that we cannot enter into com- 



petition with the works of God. But by cultivating a taste for all things 

 beautiful, by earnest endeavour to represent what we see before us, and 

 a steady determination to emulate the spider of Scottish fame. 



•i^;:^ 



