WONDERFUL INSECT-WINGS. 205 
Frankly, is there aught approaching such a degree of excellence in 
our human arts? How great the necessity ray 
v : u\\ s 4 
SEAS 
that, in their apparently fatigued and languid pate WY 
condition, they should gain life and strength 
from these living sources ! 
In general, instead of going straight to 
Nature, to the inexhaustible fountain of 
beauty and invention, they have solicited 
help from the erudition, the history, and 
the antiquity of man. 
We have copied ancient jewels; some- 
times those of the barbarous peoples which 
first procured them from our own merchants. 
We have copied the old robes and the stuffs 
of our ancestors. We have copied, especially, 
the painted-glass windows of Gothic archi- 
tecture, whose colours and forms have been 
selected haphazard, and transplanted to 
objects utterly discordant and unsuitable,— 
as, for instance, to shawls ! 
lf we were desirous of comprehending 
and rehabilitating these ancient windows, we 
might have taken a lesson from the enamels 
of certain scarabeei. Seen beneath the micro- 
scope, they present very analogous effects, 
simply because they possess the same ele- 
ments of beauty. The thirteenth century 
olass-windows (you may see them at Bourges, 
and especially in the Museum of that city) 
were double. The light therefore remained 
in them, did not pass through them, gave 
them the magical effects of precious stones. 
And of a similar character are those insect = * 
wings composed of numerous leaves, between which you may detect, 
with the microscope, a network of mysterious hieroglyphics. 
