THE TEMPLE OF NATURE. 381 



PAINTING, CARVING, AND GILDING. 



HE Temple of Nature is no plain puritanic 

 place of worship. It is rather the model of a 

 gorgeous cathedral, and, like a sacred edifice 

 of the latter description, it stands distinguished 

 by a profusion of adornment worthy of the 

 mighty fabric. 



Flowing draperies of foliage, hung on high as curtains or 

 as banners floors tesselated with flowery mosaic, or bespread 

 with verdant velvet massive pillars and slender shafts marbled 

 with painted lichen and entwined by graceful creepers all 

 these combine, while they immeasurably eclipse the beauty, to 

 attest the origin of Gothic art. 



As with this glorious fane, so it is with the worshippers of 

 every degree which are found assembled beneath its aerial 

 canopy. Beauty and variety are the prevailing characteristics 

 of living things ; and if in dignity and grace of form man and 

 a few of the larger animals must be confessed pre-eminent, we 

 find in diversity of shape and brilliancy of colouring a striking 

 augmentation as we descend, relatively to size, in the scale of 

 created beings. 



Amongst the most beautifully painted of the caterpillar race 

 are those from which spring the elegant and distinguished tribe 

 of Hawk-moths, known also as Sphinxes, from the form and 

 attitudes, elsewhere described, of these their no less distinguished 

 larvae. None, perhaps, among them, are more tastefully deco- 

 rated than that of the " privet," 1 with his doublet of the most 

 brilliant apple-green laced by oblique stripes of white and purple, 

 further adorned along the sides by orange-circled spiracles or 



1 Sphinx Ligusfri. See Vignette to l< A Midsummer Day's Dream." 



