THE LIVING GARMENT 43 



but with flowers almost normal as to size. There was 

 nowhere a mass or patch of bright colour, but over 

 the whole surface a sprinkling of yellow, red, white, 

 purple, and blue colour, the flowers everywhere mixed 

 with golden brown and silvery brown grasses, while 

 under this thin herbage appeared the red ground 

 flecked with white flints. It was a curiously beau- 

 tiful and fascinating picture. There is nothing in art 

 that can give us any idea of effects of this kind, which 

 are not uncommon in nature ; but I suppose it is a 

 fact that artists do sometimes attempt to produce 

 them; and if we have never seen the originals, or 

 having seen can blot them out, their attempts may 

 not seem wholly futile. We may see it, for instance, 

 in some exceedingly beautiful examples of the potter's 

 art, when every colour used in painting clay has been 

 thrown upon a vase or plaque and by chance a happy 

 effect has resulted. We see it too in some old Persian 

 and Turkish carpets, in which a variety of very pure 

 and beautiful colours are woven in a fabric without 

 design or pattern. Again, we get an effect of this 

 kind in a few stained-glass windows. The one I have 

 in my mind at this moment has given me more plea- 

 sure than any other window in any church or cathe- 

 dral in England ; and it is without design, for it was 

 destroyed some three or four centuries ago, but the 

 fragments were gathered up by pious hands, and after 

 many years restored to their place pieced anyho\v 

 together. 



