ORCHIDS. 47 
incubus. It is understood that the market for 
pictures is falling yearly. I believe that the 
erowth 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, distribu- 
tion, 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 under- 
standing 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 Alex- 
andre, 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 
