644 



rose-bush, setting aside all the considerations of gradated flushing 

 of colour and fair folding of line, which it shares with the cloud or 

 the snow-wreath, we find in and through all this, certain signs plea- 

 sant and acceptable as signs of life and enjoyment in the particular 

 individual plant itself. Every leaf and stalk is seen to have a func- 

 tion, to be constantly exercising that function, and as it seems, solely 

 for the good and enjoyment of the plant. It is true that reflection 

 will show us that the plant is not living for itself alone, that its life is 

 one of benefaction, that it gives as well as receives, but no sense 

 of this whatsoever mingles with our perception of physical beauty in 

 its forms. Those forms appear to be necessary to its health, the 

 symmetry of its leaflets, the smoothness of its stalks, the vivid green 

 of its shoots, are looked upon by us as signs of the plant's own happi- 

 ness and perfection ; they are useless to us, except as they give us 

 pleasure in our sympathizing with that of the plant, and if we see a 

 leaf withered, or shrunk, or worm-eaten, we say it is ugly, and feel it 

 to be most painful, not because it hurts us, but because it seems to 

 hurt the plant, and conveys to us an idea of pain and disease and 

 failure of life in it. 



" That the amount of pleasure we receive is in exact proportion to 

 the appearance of vigour and sensibility in the plant, is easily proved 

 by observing the efi'ect of those which show the evidences of it in the 

 least degree, as, for instance, any of the Cacti not in flower. Their 

 masses are heavy and simple, their growth slow, their various parts 

 iointed on one to another as if they were buckled or pinned together, 

 instead of growing out of each other (note the singular imposition in 

 many of them, the prickly pear, for instance, of the fruit upon the 

 body of the plant, so that it looks like a swelling or disease), and of- 

 ten farther opposed by harsh truncations of line, as in the Cactus 

 truncato-phylla. All these circumstances so concur to deprive the 

 plant of vital evidences, that we receive from it more sense of pain 

 than of beauty ; and yet even here, the sharpness of the angles, the 

 symmetrical order and strength of the spines, the fresh and even co- 

 lour of the body, are looked for earnestly as signs of healthy condition, 

 our pain is increased by their absence, and indefinitely increased if 

 blotches, and other appearances of bruise and decay interfere with 

 that little life which the plant seems to possess." — p. 86. 



" Now I wish particularly to impress upon the reader, that all these 

 sensations of beauty in the plant arise from our unselfish sympathy 

 with its happiness, and not from any view of the qualities in it which 

 may bring good to us, nor even from our acknowledgment, is it of 



