THE PARABLE OF JOA8H. 83 



Plate IV. is much better work, being of an easier subject, 

 adequately enough rendered by perfectly simple means. 

 Here I had only a succulent and membranous surface to rep- 

 resent, with definite outlines, and merely undulating folds ; 

 and this is sufficiently done by a careful and firm pen outline 

 on grey paper, with a slight wash of colour afterwards, rein- 

 forced in the darks; then marking the lights with white. 

 This method is classic and authoritative, being used by many 

 of the greatest masters, (by Holbein continually ;) and it is 

 much the best which the general student can adopt for ex- 

 pression of the action and muscular power of plants. 



The goodness or badness of such work depends absolutely 

 on the truth of the single line. You will find a thousand bo- 

 tanical drawings which will give you a delicate and deceptive 

 resemblance of the leaf, for one that will give you the right 

 convexity in its backbone, the right perspective of its peaks 

 when they foreshorten, or the right relation of depth in the 

 shading of its dimples. On which, in leaves as in faces, no 

 little expression of temper depends. 



Meantime we have yet to consider somewhat more touch- 

 ing that temper itself, in next chapter. 



CHAPTER VII. 



THE PARABLE OF JOTHAM. 



1. I DO not know if my readers were checked, as I wished 

 them to be, at least for a moment, in the close of the last 

 chapter, by my talking of thistles and dandelions changing 

 into seaweed, by gradation of which, doubtless, Mr. Darwin 

 can furnish us with specious and sufficient instances. But 

 the two groups will not be contemplated in our Oxford sys- 

 tem as in any parental relations whatsoever. 



We shall, however, find some very notable relations existing 

 between the two groups of the wild flowers of dry land, which 

 represent, in the widest extent, and the distinctest opposition, 

 the two characters of material serviceableness and unservice- 



